HOW DOES SEX DIFFERENCE AFFECT VERBAL FLUENCY?

A brain-scan study conducted by a French research team suggests that language performance and differences in brain activity may be affected by a person's sex.

Researchers at Montpellier 1 University (UM1) say that they have found differences among male and female groups on activation strength linked to verbal fluency, i.e. word generation, in a new fMRI studyThe findings from previous fMRI studies identifying the neural basis of sex differences in language production are still in debate, according to background information in a research article published in the journal Cortex.

Particularly, the question of group differences in verbal abilities, which might account for neurocognitive differences elicited between men and women, still remain unresolved.Despite the cerebral regions involved in both men and women being identical, men show greater activation than women, irrespective of performance levels in classical language regions—namely, frontal, temporal and occipital lobes, and cerebellum.

The researchers revealed that from a representative sample of 331 French speakers, students showing a sex difference for a verbal fluency task, with women scoring higher than men as reported in the literature, four groups of 11 healthy right handed subjects were selected a priori.

According to them, the selection was based on sex and contrasted scores in a fluency task, that is, high versus low verbal fluency scores.The 44 subjects were submitted to a covert verbal fluency fMRI protocol, they revealed.

Besides a sex effect, the research team also noticed a performance effect irrespective of sex.Low fluency subjects elicit greater activation in the anterior cingulate than high fluency subjects, with the later activating the cerebellum more than those with low performances.

10/12/2012  :  The Times Of India.

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