Language processing is strongly left lateralized in both sexes: Evidence from functional MRI

Abstract

Functional MRI (fMRI) was used to examine gender effects on brain activation during a language comprehension task. A large number of subjects (50 women and 50 men) was studied to maximize the statistical power to detect subtle differences between the sexes. To estimate the specificity of findings related to sex differences, parallel analyses were performed on two groups of randomly assigned subjects. Men and women showed very similar, strongly left lateralized activation patterns. Voxel-wise tests for group differences in overall activation patterns demonstrated no significant differences between women and men. In further analyses, group differences were examined by region of interest and by hemisphere. No differences were found between the sexes in lateralization of activity in any region of interest or in intrahemispheric cortical activation patterns. These data argue against substantive differences between men and women in the large-scale neural organization of language processes.

Non-invasive regime for language lateralization in right and left-handers by means of functional MRI and dichotic listening

“…This might be due to the fact that classification of nouns and verbs was associated with syntactic aspects of language processing. The observation that syntactic processing, in contrast to processing on the single word level, is associated with more bilateral inferior frontal gyrus activation was already described in a previous fMRI study from our institution (Ferstl and von Cramon 2000). In contrast, semantic encoding necessitates recognition of the word and retrieval of the whole word context to accomplish the abstract/concrete judgment.…”

The Role of Gender in Face Recognition

“…In support of this, a more bilateral pattern in the visual and auditory functions was found in women than in men. This reasoning has been supported in a functional magnetic imaging study (Vikingstad, George, Johnson & Cao, 2000; but see also Frost et al, 1999).…”

Gender Differences in Emotional Prosody Processing-an Fmri Study-

“…However, attempts to prove this hypothesis have been inconclusive. Some data indicate that language primarily lateralizes to left in males, and approximately half have left lateralization and the other half have bilateral representation in females (Vikingstad et al, 2000), while other results suggest that men and women show very similar, strongly left lateralized activation patterns (Frost et al, 1999).…”

“…A much debated question is whether sex differences exist in the functional organization of the brain for language and prosody (Baxter et al, 2003;Frost et al, 1999;Koelsch, Maess, Grossmann, & Friederici, 2003;Kotz et al, 2003;Schirmer, Kotz, & Friederici, 2002;Schirmer & Kotz, 2003;Shaywitz et al, 1995;Vikingstad, George, Johnson, & Cao, 2000). A long-held hypothesis posits that language functions are more likely to be highly lateralized in males and to be represented in both cerebral hemispheres in females.…”