What takes that male patient a year to start doing again—say, walking, or speaking, or being able to dress himself in the morning—might take a female only six or seven months. This is true even if she suffered the same kind of injury to the same place in the head: the same amount of force, the same type of impact. This isn’t because women are better at taking a hit in general. It’s just that a female-typical brain seems to be better at repairing itself or even at preventing certain kinds of damage in the first place.
