title: Females and males rely on different cortical regions in Raven's Matrices reasoning capacity: evidence from a voxel-based morphometry study.
abstract: Raven's Matrices test (RMT) is a non-verbal test designed to assess individuals' ability to reason and solve new problems without relying extensively on declarative knowledge derived from schooling or previous experience. Despite a large number of behavioral studies that demonstrated gender differences in Raven's Matrices reasoning ability, no neural evidence supported this difference. In this study, voxel-based morphometry (VBM) was used in an attempt to uncover the gender-specific neural basis of Raven's Matrices reasoning ability as measured by the combined Raven's Matrices test (CRT) in 370 healthy young adults. The behavioral results showed no difference between males and females. However, the VBM results showed that the relationship between reasoning ability and regional gray matter volume (rGMV) differed between sexes. The association between CRT scores and rGMV in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (associated with visuospatial ability) was significantly greater in males than in females, whereas the reverse was true for the inferior frontal cortex (relating to verbal reasoning ability) and the medial frontal cortex (engaged in information binding) where the association was greater in females. These findings suggest that males and females use differently structured brains in different ways to achieve similar levels of overall Raven's Matrices reasoning ability.
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Cognition and Personality (SWU), Ministry of Education, Chongqing, China; Faculty of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing, China.
authors.forename: Wenjing
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Cognition and Personality (SWU), Ministry of Education, Chongqing, China; Faculty of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing, China.
authors.forename: Peiduo
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Cognition and Personality (SWU), Ministry of Education, Chongqing, China; Faculty of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing, China.
authors.forename: Dongtao
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Wei
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Cognition and Personality (SWU), Ministry of Education, Chongqing, China; Faculty of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing, China.
authors.forename: Wenfu
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Cognition and Personality (SWU), Ministry of Education, Chongqing, China; Faculty of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing, China.
authors.forename: Glenn
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Hitchman
authors.affiliation: Institute of Education, China West Normal University, Nanchong, China.
authors.forename: Xueping
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Cognition and Personality (SWU), Ministry of Education, Chongqing, China; Faculty of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing, China.
authors.forename: Jiang
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Qiu
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Cognition and Personality (SWU), Ministry of Education, Chongqing, China; Faculty of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing, China.
authors.forename: Qinglin
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Zhang
mesh_terms: D005260:Female; D059907:Functional Neuroimaging; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D017397:Prefrontal Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D011340:Problem Solving / Q000502:physiology; D012727:Sex Characteristics; D013850:Thinking / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult