title: Sex differences in functional brain activation during a lexical visual field task.
abstract: Functional MRI was used to investigate sex differences in brain activation during a paradigm similar to a lexical-decision task. Six males and 6 females performed two runs of the lexical visual field task (i.e., deciding which visual field a word compared with a pseudoword was presented to). A sex difference was noted behaviorally: The reaction time data showed males had a marginal right visual field advantage and women a left visual field advantage. Imaging results showed that men had a strongly left-lateralized pattern of activation, e.g., inferior frontal and fusiform gyrus, while women showed a more symmetrical pattern in language related areas with greater right-frontal and right-middle-temporal activation. The data show evidence of task-specific sex differences in the cerebral organization of language processing.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychological Medicine and Neuroimaging, Institute of Psychiatry, London, UK. susan@maccs.mq.edu.au
authors.forename: Susan L
authors.initials: SL
authors.lastname: Rossell
authors.forename: Edward T
authors.initials: ET
authors.lastname: Bullmore
authors.forename: Steve C R
authors.initials: SC
authors.lastname: Williams
authors.forename: Anthony S
authors.initials: AS
authors.lastname: David
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001921:Brain / Q000033:anatomy & histology / Q000502:physiology*; D003657:Decision Making; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D012737:Sex Factors; D014794:Visual Fields / Q000502:physiology*; D014825:Vocabulary