Functional sex differences in human primary auditory cortex

Abstract

Background We used PET to study cortical activation during auditory stimulation and found sex differences in the human primary auditory cortex (PAC). Regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) was measured in 10 male and 10 female volunteers while listening to sounds (music or white noise) and during a baseline (no auditory stimulation). Results and discussion We found a sex difference in activation of the left and right PAC when comparing music to noise. The PAC was more activated by music than by noise in both men and women. But this difference between the two stimuli was significantly higher in men than in women. To investigate whether this difference could be attributed to either music or noise, we compared both stimuli with the baseline and revealed that noise gave a significantly higher activation in the female PAC than in the male PAC. Moreover, the male group showed a deactivation in the right prefrontal cortex when comparing noise to the baseline, which was not present in the female group. Interestingly, the auditory and prefrontal regions are anatomically and functionally linked and the prefrontal cortex is known to be engaged in auditory tasks that involve sustained or selective auditory attention. Thus we hypothesize that differences in attention result in a different deactivation of the right prefrontal cortex, which in turn modulates the activation of the PAC and thus explains the sex differences found in the activation of the PAC. Conclusion Our results suggest that sex is an important factor in auditory brain studies.

Prefrontal Cortex Based Sex Differences in Tinnitus Perception: Same Tinnitus Intensity, Same Tinnitus Distress, Different Mood

“…The auditory cortex encodes tinnitus intensity [56]. Sex differences were already detected in processing noise, indicating that females activate their auditory cortex significantly more than males [19]. However, this study did not reveal any activity differences in the auditory cortex.…”

Neural activity underlying tinnitus generation: Results from PET and fMRI

“…Gender differences were found showing differences in the primary auditory cortex between males and females in silent lip reading (Ruytjens et al, 2007a) as well as processing of noise stimuli (Ruytjens et al, 2007b). Subject groups should thus be matched on gender to prevent misinterpretation.…”

Gender and the performance of music

“…Importantly, processing of auditory signals of both speech and music are affected by these differences (Brown, 1999; Gaab et al, 2003; Lattner et al, 2005; Ruytjens et al, 2007; Sergeant and Vraka, 2014). Recent studies have shown that auditory evoked potentials (AEPs) may differ in latency between sexes, with females showing significantly shorter inter-peak values measured at brainstem levels than males (Khatoon M Nighute and Ishaque, 2013).…”