Long thought to be passive tissue, white matter affects learning and brain functions, modulating the distribution of action potentials, acting as a relay and coordinating communication between different brain regions. White matter is named for its relatively light appearance resulting from the lipid content of myelin.

The only exceptions of animal brains using more than 10% (in terms of O2 intake) are a few primates (11–13%) and humans.

Male and female brain anatomy. Males and females differ in some aspects of their brains, notably the overall difference in size, with men having larger brains on average (between 8% and 13% larger), but there are areas of the brain that appear not to be sexually differentiated.

Although research on sex differences in aggression show that males are generally more likely to display aggression than females, how much of this is due to social factors and gender expectations is unclear. It also found males tend to engage in more unprovoked aggression at higher frequency than females.

An understanding of these roles is evident in children as young as age 4 and are extremely important for their social development. Gender roles are influenced by the media, family, environment, and society. A child’s understanding of gender roles impacts how they socialize with their peers and form relationships.

The social construction of gender is a theory in feminism and sociology about the manifestation of cultural origins, mechanisms, and corollaries of gender perception and expression in the context of interpersonal and group social interaction.

Queer theory is the lens used to explore and challenge how scholars, activists, artistic texts, and the media perpetrate gender- and sex-based binaries, and its goal is to undo hierarchies and fight against social inequalities.