What the new field of women’s neuroscience reveals about female brains

There is a huge hole in our understanding of the brain. A gaping, woman-shaped hole. While neuroscience has given us countless insights into how our minds work, history reveals a major oversight: most of those studies were performed on both men and women without considering that there might be differences between their brains. Only recently have we begun to realise the impact of this blind spot. For example, research has now shown that the brain is dramatically remodelled after giving birth, while another study found that the fluctuations of the menstrual cycle affect how the brain works.

This oversight not only leaves us in the dark about how reproductive stages affect the brain, but calls into question many other, broader conclusions in neuroscience. It is also what inspired neuroscientist-turned-entrepreneur Emilė Radytė to co-found a start-up called Samphire Neuroscience, where she is using non-invasive brain stimulation to transform our understanding of conditions that predominantly affect women, from premenstrual syndrome and period pain to postpartum depression. New Scientist asked Radytė how a better understanding of women’s neuroscience could change the way we treat mental health issues – and about the implications of this emerging field for everything we previously thought we knew about the human brain.

Helen Thomson: You trained as a neuroscientist. How did you come to use that expertise to develop a brain stimulation device?

Emilė Radytė: Throughout my undergraduate degree, I worked as an emergency medic. I realised that about 50 per cent of our cases were actually psychiatric emergencies. You think about paramedics helping someone who is bleeding or having a heart attack, but I was seeing addiction, suicide,…