title: Sex differences in mental rotation: top-down versus bottom-up processing.
abstract: Functional MRI during performance of a validated mental rotation task was used to assess a neurobiological basis for sex differences in visuospatial processing. Between-sex group analysis demonstrated greater activity in women than in men in dorsalmedial prefrontal and other high-order heteromodal association cortices, suggesting women performed mental rotation in an effortful, "top-down" fashion. In contrast, men activated primary sensory cortices as well as regions involved in implicit learning (basal ganglia) and mental imagery (precuneus), consistent with a more automatic, "bottom-up" strategy. Functional connectivity analysis in association with a measure of behavioral performance showed that, in men (but not women), accurate performance was associated with deactivation of parieto-insular vestibular cortex (PIVC) as part of a visual-vestibular network. Automatic evocation by men to a greater extent than women of this network during mental rotation may represent an effective, unconscious, bottom-up neural strategy which could reasonably account for men's traditional visuospatial performance advantage.
authors.affiliation: Functional Neuroimaging Laboratory, Department of Psychiatry, Weill Medical College of Cornell University, Box 140, 1300 York Avenue, New York, NY 10021, USA. tab2006@med.cornell.edu
authors.forename: Tracy
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Butler
authors.forename: Julianne
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Imperato-McGinley
authors.forename: Hong
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Pan
authors.forename: Daniel
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Voyer
authors.forename: Juan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Cordero
authors.forename: Yuan-Shan
authors.initials: YS
authors.lastname: Zhu
authors.forename: Emily
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Stern
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Silbersweig
mesh_terms: D001921:Brain / Q000033:anatomy & histology / Q000502:physiology*; D001931:Brain Mapping / Q000379:methods*; D005260:Female; D007839:Functional Laterality; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008606:Mental Processes / Q000502:physiology*; D009039:Motion Perception; D009415:Nerve Net / Q000033:anatomy & histology / Q000502:physiology; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012399:Rotation; D012727:Sex Characteristics; D013028:Space Perception