Men and women differ in the neural basis of handwriting

Abstract

There is an ongoing debate about whether, and to what extent, males differ from females in their language skills. In the case of handwriting, a composite language skill involving language and motor processes, behavioral observations consistently show robust sex differences but the mechanisms underlying the effect are unclear. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in a copying task, the present study examined the neural basis of sex differences in handwriting in 53 healthy adults (ages 19–28, 27 males). Compared to females, males showed increased activation in the left posterior middle frontal gyrus (Exner's area), a region thought to support the conversion between orthographic and graphomotor codes. Functional connectivity between Exner's area and the right cerebellum was greater in males than in females. Furthermore, sex differences in brain activity related to handwriting were independent of language material. This study identifies a novel neural signature of sex differences in a hallmark of human behavior, and highlights the importance of considering sex as a factor in scientific research and clinical applications involving handwriting.

Tablet Technology for Writing and Drawing during Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging: A Review

“…For example, Mandarin Chinese has a logographic writing system, whereas Germanic languages like English and Romance languages like Italian have an alphabetic writing system. Recently, tablet prototype 1 was employed in several fMRI studies to examine the neural correlates of Chinese writing [ 89 , 90 , 91 ]. In an fMRI study of the brain activity associated with orthographic access during Chinese writing in 34 healthy young adults, a delayed copying task on high and low frequency Chinese characters was administered [ 89 ].…”

“…The findings also supported the central and peripheral processes of writing and showed both similarities and differences in brain activity compared to that observed in other fMRI studies involving alphabetic languages. The same group of investigators also explored sex differences in both the behavioural performance and neural correlates of Chinese writing [ 91 ], involving 53 healthy young adults performing tasks as described above [ 89 ]. Although widespread brain regions associated with writing were observed, consistent with previous writing studies [ 22 , 83 ], the effect of sex on behaviour and brain activity was inconsistent and equivocal—either due to insufficient ecological validity of the tablet, or various other factors requiring further research study.…”

The cortical organization of writing sequence: evidence from observing Chinese characters in motion

“…Furthermore, there was a circuit formed by the right IFG, right postcentral gyrus, and right IPL with both feedforward and feedback mechanisms. The right IPL, somehow similar to the left precentral gyrus and left SPL, is speci cally involved in handwriting (Planton et al 2013;Yang et al 2020). Therefore, it is reasonable to speculate that a similar top-down model to the connection among the right IFG, right postcentral gyrus and left precentral gyrus or left SPL is also observed for the right IPL, while there is also a feedback pathway from the right IPL to the right IFG, which can be regarded as bottom-up attentional reorienting and inhibition when unexpected or invalid stimuli is observed (Igelstrom and Graziano 2017).…”

Graphology Analysis and Identification of Personality Profile using Task fMRI

“…The three emotional states depression, anxiety and stress are plotted against the number of persons to know the dataset distribution in figure 3. Multilayer perceptron hidden layer is a function f: R 90 -R 13 for the given size of input and output vector f(x), f(x)= G(b (2) + W (2) (s (b (1) + W (1) x))), (1) where b (1) , b(2) are bias vector and W (1), W (2) exist as weight matrix and G and s are activation functions.…”

“…Cerebellum is a major neural surface of handwriting that is to be regarded for in various composing functions, and most has been recommended that it bolsters the motor enforcement in handwriting [2] the network amidst Exner's region and the cerebellum speak to the neural net assisting the correspondence between motor intending to execution. This examination just enrolled a gathering of grown-up members with a tight scope old enough, and along these lines it is muddled regardless if the neural contrast in handwriting equipped by the current investigation could possibly apply to individuals of various ages [1]. Figure 1 shows the sample database of the handwriting, written in note.…”