Language processing is strongly left lateralized in both sexes. Evidence from functional MRI. Brain 1999 Feb;122 ( Pt 2):199-208
Date
03/10/1999Pubmed ID
10071049DOI
10.1093/brain/122.2.199Scopus ID
2-s2.0-0032902450 (requires institutional sign-in at Scopus site) 384 CitationsAbstract
Functional MRI (fMRI) was used to examine gender effects on brain activation during a language comprehension task. A large number of subjects (50 women and 50 men) was studied to maximize the statistical power to detect subtle differences between the sexes. To estimate the specificity of findings related to sex differences, parallel analyses were performed on two groups of randomly assigned subjects. Men and women showed very similar, strongly left lateralized activation patterns. Voxel-wise tests for group differences in overall activation patterns demonstrated no significant differences between women and men. In further analyses, group differences were examined by region of interest and by hemisphere. No differences were found between the sexes in lateralization of activity in any region of interest or in intrahemispheric cortical activation patterns. These data argue against substantive differences between men and women in the large-scale neural organization of language processes.
Author List
Frost JA, Binder JR, Springer JA, Hammeke TA, Bellgowan PS, Rao SM, Cox RWAuthor
Jeffrey R. Binder MD Professor in the Neurology department at Medical College of WisconsinMESH terms used to index this publication - Major topics in bold
Acoustic StimulationAdult
Analysis of Variance
Cerebral Cortex
Discrimination Learning
Female
Functional Laterality
Humans
Language
Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Male
Multivariate Analysis
Sex Factors
Speech Perception
