British scientists say female human brains do, in fact, mature faster than male brains do -- and they know why.

In a study published in the journal Cerebral Cortex, researchers announced the reorganization of brain connections, as an individual transitions from childhood to adulthood, begins earlier in girls and is a likely reason girls mature faster than boys during their teen years.

The study was part of the Human Green Brain project funded by the British Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, which provides government funding for research. The project examines human brain development.

Study leaders Marcus Kaiser and Sol Lim at Newcastle University in England, along with colleagues in Glasgow University in Scotland and Seoul University in South Korea, evaluated the brain scans of 121 healthy participants aged 4-40.

The researchers demonstrated the loss of white matter fibers between brain regions is a highly selective process, a phenomenon they describe as preferential detachment.

They found connections between distant brain regions, between brain hemispheres and between processing modules lose fewer nerve fibers during brain maturation than expected.

The researchers said that newly-discovered selective process might explain why brain function does not deteriorate, but indeed improves, during what could be otherwise thought of as downsizing one's neural network.

Lim confirmed the loss of connectivity during brain development can actually improve brain functions because it allows the network to be arranged more efficiently.

And that brain streamlining leaves the distinct impression that girls mature faster than boys.

Kaiser and Lim explained as people grow older, their brains undergo major reorganizations that reduce the overall connections in the brain while preserving long-distance connections that are crucial for integrating information.

As such, "long-distance connections are difficult to establish and maintain, but are crucial for fast and efficient processing," Kaiser said in a statement. "If you think about a social network, nearby friends might give you very similar information. You might hear the same news from different people" and "people from different cities or countries are more likely to give you novel information.

In the same way, he continued, some information that flows through one area of the brain could be redundant, whereas "information from other modules, say integrating the optical information about a face with the acoustic information of a voice, is vital in making sense of the outside world."