AI can identify a child’s sex based on their brain activity
An AI can identify the sex of a 9 to 10-year-old child based on their brain scans, but may be less accurate when it comes to gauging their gender
By Moheb Costandi
15 July 2024
The activity within brain networks appears to differ between boys and girls
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Artificial intelligence can differentiate between the brain patterns of boys and girls aged 9 to 10 years old according to their sex, and possibly their gender – but not everyone is convinced by the accuracy of the results.
The prevalence of conditions such as pain, headache and heart disease differs between the sexes, but we know little about the neurological variations here or between genders, particularly among children.
To learn more, Elvisha Dhamala at the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research in New York and her colleagues analysed thousands of sets of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data from more than 4700 children, with a roughly even split between the sexes. The children were all aged 9 to 10 and are participating in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development project.
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Sex was defined according to someone’s “anatomy, physiology, genetics and/or hormones at birth”. Gender was judged according to “features of an individual’s attitude, feelings and behaviours”.
Parents weren’t asked outright what they thought their children’s genders were. Instead, this was assessed by asking them a series of questions, such as how often their children imitate male or female TV and film characters, whether they state that they wish to be a girl or a boy, and if they say they dislike their genitals. All these questions were weighted equally and combined into a score.
