The Controversy About a Sexual Dimorphism of the Human Corpus Callosum

Abstract

A sexual dimorphism of the splenium corporis callosi in man was reported in 1982. The authors described the posterior part of the female corpus callosum to be larger and more bulbous than its male counterpart. From the lateralization research, it has previously been stated that the female brain is less well lateralized for visuospatial functions than the male. The authors postulated that a larger splenium implies a larger number of fibers and that the number of interhemispheric fibers correlates inversely with lateralization of function. However, their sample was very small and not adequately matched for sex. Therefore, we reinvestigated this question. A standardized computer assisted program will be presented. With this program the "classical" parameters have been evaluated and the "rotatory diameter measurement" was performed. No differences between the sexes were seen either for the splenium corporis callosi or for the other parts of the corpus callosum.

Visual spatial processing and its relation to the corpus callosum

“…Subsequent studies could confirm the assumption of sexual dimorphisms in the gross structure of the human corpus callosum [3,6,7,16,31], others could not [4,18,29,30]. Whether the va¡ in corpus callosum anatomy is related to variation in subject of behavioral characteristics remains to be detennined, but sex and functional asymmetries have always been two considerable factors in recent studies.…”

Gender‐ and age‐related differences in the morphology of the corpus callosum

“…A longer corpus callosum in the males has been reported in one other study by Hopper (1994); however, most workers have not identified sexual dimorphism in callosal length (deLacosteUtamsing and Holloway, 1982;Weber and Weis, 1986;Weis et al, 1989;Clarke et al, 1989;Going and Dixson, 1990). Although gender differences have been reported in the width of the genu (Witelson, 1989;Banka and Jit, 1996), trunk (Clarke and Zaidel, 1994), and splenium (deLacoste-Utamsing and Holloway, 1982;Clarke et al, 1989) and the area of the corpus callosum (de Lacoste-Utamsing and Holloway, 1982;Clarke et al, 1989;Holloway et al, 1993), no significant gender difference in widths or area was found in our series (Table 2).…”

“…In contrast, there are reports of a larger callosal area (Clark et al, 1989), genu (Witelson, 1989;Banka and Jit, 1996) and anterior trunk area (Witelson, 1989) in males. Many studies failed to reveal gender differences in the size of the corpus callosum (Bleier et al, 1986;Kertesz et al, 1987;Oppenheim et al, 1987;Clarke et al, 1989;Weis et al, 1989;Habib et al, 1991;Pozzili et al, 1994;Parashos et al, 1995).…”

A volumetric study of the corpus callosum in 20s and 40s Korean people

“…Previous studies by investigators on changes in corpus callosum size according to gender have shown controversial results. Some results showed that there was a gender difference in corpus callosum size (Johnson et al 1994;Driesen and Raz 1995;Bishop and Wahlsten 1997;Salat et al 1997;Sullivan et al 2001;Allen et al 2003), while others could not find any differences (Weis et al 1989;Kertesz et al 1990;Constant and Ruther 1996). Some investigators reported that there might be a relationship between the volume and weight of the brain and body parameters such as height and weight (Pakkenberg and Voigt 1964;Nopoulos et al 2000;Chung et al 2005;Koh et al 2005).…”