An fMRI Study of Sex Differences in Regional Activation to a Verbal and a Spatial Task

“Our purpose was to find specific brain areas in AAL gyri we performed a small volume correction in each gyrus based on the AAL atlas to correct for multiple comparisons (Gur et al., 2000; Singh et al., 2014).”

“It has been administered in functional neuroimaging studies (R. C. Gur et al., 1982; R. C. Gur et al., 1983; R. C. Gur et al., 2000; R. C. Gur & Reivich, 1980; Roalf et al., 2013; Wharton et al., 2000), reliably producing left hemispheric temporoparietal activation, with performance linked to…”

“…2010), face discrimination (Hausmann, & Gunturkun, 1999), the recognition of natural scenes with spatial filtering (Peyrin et al., 2006a), an attentional probe task (Davidson, Cave, & Sellner, 2000), and a spatial task (Gur et al., 2000), demonstrated that men are more lateralized than women.”

“Females show greater bilateral activation and interhemispheric connectivity than males in language functions, assessment of beauty, and spatial processing (Bitan, Lifshitz, Breznitz, & Booth, 2010; Gur et al., 2000; McGlone, 1980; Rilea, 2008).”

“Such sex differences have been attributed to greater development of the right cerebral hemisphere in males, and the left hemisphere in females plus a more developed corpus callosum (Gur et al, 2000 ).”

“During visuospatial tasks, cerebellum, occipital lobe, parietal lobe, and frontal lobe are activated and it is well known that especially the parietal lobe plays an important role (Chung et al., 2006, 2007; Fink, Marshall, Weiss, & Zilles, 2001; Gur et al., 2000; Ng et al., 2001; Sohn et al., 2002).”

“However, most previous studies were based on task fMRI with abstracted and repeated stimuli (Lv et al. 2015a, b, c; Gur et al. 2000; Baron-Cohen et al. 1999; Manoach et al. 2000; Tapert et al. 2001), while only a handful of studies employed natural stimuli fMRI (N-fMRI) such as video watching…”

“Based on these findings, it seems reasonable to infer that the use of taboo language is influenced and encouraged by the context. Both females and males used more swear words on pages of female and male celebrities, respectively, implying thus that males, as well as females, seem to generally feel bolder and more enco…”

“Sex differences in cognitive performance are attributed to various biological factors, including neuronal lateralization [11, 12], region-specific brain dimor-phisms [12–14], and gonadal hormone levels [15–19].”

“35 In addition, our results indicated that education in fl uenced JLO performance, although its effect was relatively small.”

“Similarly, the visuospatial JLO task has been found to recruit regions in the posterior PC that overlap with pain processing, and selective attention to visual tasks has been found to successfully attenuate cold pain perception in prior studies (Gur et al., 2000; Veldhuijzen et al., 2006).”

“By applying fMRI, gender differences are found in brain areas that are activated during memory [134–136], spatial [137–141] and language processing [136, 137, 142–144], cognitive control [145].”

“On the one hand there was evidence to suggest biological differences in visuospatial ability (Gur et al., 2000), and sex differences in brain development and hormonal differences (Halpern, 1992; Hyde, 1981; Wilder & Powell, 1989) as key explanatory variables for the gender gap in mathematics and science.”

“In [9], when the subjects performed Benton test (line orientation dis crimination), men exhibited a higher level of activa tion of the caudal areas of the cortex connected with the primary analysis of a visual signal, as judged by the BOLD response criterion.”

“Results of the examination by functional magnetic resonance imaging indicate such a possibility [29]: in the test on orientation sensitivity, the area of the acti vated visual cortex in women was less than in men.”

“For example, men compared to women show greater involvement of parietal areas in the task of men tal rotation [22] and pronounced right hemisphere pre dominance during visual task performance [14].”

“Although left parietal lesions are also associated with impairments, the deficiency is more severe in the case of right parietal damage ( Ng et al, 2000 ), and these findings are supported by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data suggesting a crucial involvement of the parietal lobes bilaterally with a rig…”

“It is well known that during visuospatial tasks there is activity at the cerebellum, occipital lobe, parietal lobe, and frontal lobe, with the parietal lobe, in particular, having an important role (Chung et al., 2004; Fink et al., 2001; Gur et al., 2000; Ng et al., 2001).”

“The findings of the current study may also be attributed to differences in how male and female brain networks process spatial information (Gur et al. 2000; Haier et al. 2005; Yuan et al. 2019; Ramos-Loyo et al. 2022; Zhang et al. 2024).”

“Others have demonstrated similar findings (Garn et al., 2009; Gauthier et al., 2009; Gur et al., 2000; Hugdahl et al., 2006).”

“Task difficulty could also potentially cause right hemispheric compensation (Gur et al., 2000), since the tasks used in this study were challenging in order to ensure participants and target engagement during brain stimulation.”

“Studies such as the one conducted by Gur et al. (2000) illustrate that, in general, there are distinct differences in brain activity between men and women as well as in anything connected with spatial orientation thinking.”

“, 2003), greater FCL in males has not been reported in fMRI responses (Gur et al., 2000).”

“For instance, sex-specific activation patterns in cortical regions during MR tasks are well-established (Gur et al., 2000; Nopoulos et al., 2000; Speck et al., 2000; Siegel-Hinson & McKeever, 2002), suggesting that males employ holistic strategies while females utilize analytic strategies (Jordan…”

“…performance of the left hemisphere, for example, due to language disorders, inhibitory brain stimulation, task difficulty, Dominguez et al., 2014; Gur et al., 2000; Hartwigsen et al., 2013; Meinzer et al., 2009; Meinzer et al., 2013; Pagnotta et al., 2015; Rodrigues de Almeida et al., 2020; Sun…”

“Various task fMRI studies have found widely spread gender differences in the bilateral amygdala, hypothalamus, right cerebellum, and posterior and superior temporal sulcus in response to emotional and visuospatial processing [36]–[38]; right hemisphere activation in response to visuospatial tests [39]; differing activ…”

“It was ascertained that oestrogen receptors (ERβ) detected in cerebellum interact with neurotransmitter γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA) (Friden et al., 2003) and higher estradiol concentration improve procedural memory (Gur et al., 2000).”

“This finding is consistent with the results of Gur and coauthors (Gur et al., 2000).”

“Prior research has demonstrated sex-specific patterns in verbal and spatial tasks, including differences in performance and neural activation [41, 42].”

“Pria cenderung menunjukkan aktivasi parietal yang dominan, yang menunjukkan pendekatan pemrosesan koordinat, sementara wanita menunjukkan aktivasi frontal inferior tambahan, yang menunjukkan strategi pemrosesan yang lebih kategoris (Gur et al., 2000; Hugdahl et al., 2006).”

“Extensive behavioral and neurophysiological evidence suggests that there are sex-related differences in cognitive tasks, especially those related to attention [Bosco et al., 2004; Gur et al., 1999, 2000; Hyde, 2016; Ingalhalikar et al., 2014; Mikhailova et al., 2022].”

“The greater sensitivity of the male visual cortex to orientational characteristics has been confi rmed by functional MRI data recorded during a line orientation identifi cation task [Gur et al., 2000].”

“, 2006); right hemisphere activation in response to visuospatial tests (Gur et al., 2000); differing activations in the superior parietal”

“The reduction was evident for the dorsolateral area in men (9%) and women (11%), for the dorsomedial area only in men (9%)(22).”

“…in non-right handed subjects than in right handed subjects (Annett, 2002; Asenova, 2014; Hirnstein, Hugdahl, & Hausmann, 2018; Kimura, 1999; Witelson, 1989), and in females than males (Godard & Fiori, 2010; Gur et al., 2000; Hirnstein, Hugdahl, & Hausmann, 2018; Kimura, 1999; Witelson, 1989).”

“Our group has previously published studies showing the relationships between test scores and specific brain regions (Gur et al., 2000; Roalf et al., 2014), and we were guided by those results.”

“Gur et al. (2000) reported that the areas of brain activation related to spatial perception were activated in the right hemisphere for women and in both the hemispheres for men.”

“Furthermore, other studies showed that women and men use different brain structures when performing mental rotation (e.g., Gur et al., 2000; Haier et al., 2004, 2005; Haier et al. 2006; Hugdahl et al. 2006).”

“For instance, some have argued that factors such as handedness (Annett 1992), brain lateralization (Gur et al. 2000), or hormone levels (Silverman and Phillips 1993) have a large impact on this sex difference.”

“Supporting this interpretation, prior studies have shown stronger right-hemisphere activation in males during spatial tasks, whereas females tend to engage both hemispheres 14,29,30 .”

“A possible explanation of these findings could be because females have lower right hemisphere specialization and more leftward asymmetry of frontal lobe fractional anisotropy compared to males (Gur et al., 2000; Szeszko et al., 2003).”

“The higher sensitivity of the visual cortex of the male brain to orientation characteristics is confirmed by the functional magnetic resonance imaging data recorded during the task of identifying line orientations [28].”

“…in to account the evidence from other fMRI research, the functional organization of speech perception may be different between males and females (Gur et al., 2000; Shaywitz et al., 1995), there remains the possibility that the results may be different in the female participants compared to the…”

“For example, functional MRI (fMRI) studies have shown lateralized activation in homotopic regions for verbal and spatial complex cognitive tasks (Gur et al., 2000), with sex differences indicating more focal activation for males during the spatial task and for females in response to the verbal task, and activation of…”

“…(Allen, Damasio, Grabowski, Bruss & Zhang, 2003; Gur, Gunning-Dixon, Bilker, & Gur, 2002; Shikhman, 2007), functional differences (Speck et al., 2000), as well as among other differences circulating gonadal hormones have impact on cognition (Gur et al., 2000; Mathew, Wilson, & Tant, 1986).”