This TED Talk features neuroscientist Lisa Mosconi, recorded live at TED Women 2019.

Women are works of art on the outside as on the inside.

I am a neuroscientist and I focus on the inside, especially on women's brains.

There are many theories on how women's brains differ from men's brains.

And I've been looking at brains for 20 years

and can guarantee that there is no such thing as a gendered brain.

Pink and blue, Barbie and Lego,

those are all inventions that have nothing to do with the way our brains

are built. That said, women's brains differ from men's brains in some respects. And I'm here to

talk about these differences because they actually matter for our health. For example, women are more

likely than men to be diagnosed with an anxiety disorder or depression,

not to mention headaches and migraines, but also at the core of my research,

women are more likely than men to have Alzheimer's disease.

Alzheimer's disease is the most common cause of dementia on the planet,

affecting close to 6 million people in the United States alone.

But almost two-thirds of all those people are actually women.

So for every man suffering from Alzheimer's, there are two women.

So why is that overall? Is it age? Is it lifespan? What else could

it be? A few years ago, I launched the Women's Brain Initiative at WALCONET Medicine in New York City

exactly to answer those questions. And tonight, I'm here with some answers. So, it turns out

our brains age differently, and menopause plays a key role here for women. Now, most people

think of the brain in some kind of black box isolated from the rest of the body,

...