Yasen Alia L, Raber Jacob, Miller Jeremy K, Piper Brian J
Department of Psychology, Willamette University, Salem, OR, USA.
Department of Behavioral Neuroscience, Oregon Health and Science University, Portland, OR, USA.
Arch Sex Behav. 2015 Nov;44(8):2219-26. doi: 10.1007/s10508-015-0497-1. Epub 2015 Mar 7.
The purpose of this study was to examine how sex and apolipoprotein E (APOE) genotype contribute to individual differences in spatial learning and memory. The associations of APOE genotype with neurocognitive function have been well studied among the elderly but less is known at earlier ages. Young adults (n = 169, 88 females) completed three neurocognitive tasks: mental rotation, spatial span, and Memory Island, a spatial navigation test. Males outperformed females on all three tasks: finding the hidden targets more quickly on Memory Island (Cohen's d = 0.62) and obtaining higher scores on mental rotation (d = 0.54) and spatial span (d = 0.37). In contrast, no significant effects of APOE were observed. The identified sex differences elaborate upon past literature documenting sexually dimorphic performance on specific neurobehavioral tasks.
本研究的目的是探讨性别和载脂蛋白E(APOE)基因型如何导致空间学习和记忆的个体差异。APOE基因型与神经认知功能之间的关联在老年人中已得到充分研究,但在较早年龄段了解较少。年轻成年人(n = 169,88名女性)完成了三项神经认知任务:心理旋转、空间广度和空间导航测试“记忆岛”。男性在所有三项任务上的表现均优于女性:在“记忆岛”上更快找到隐藏目标(科恩d值 = 0.62),在心理旋转(d值 = 0.54)和空间广度(d值 = 0.37)上获得更高分数。相比之下,未观察到APOE的显著影响。所确定的性别差异进一步阐述了过去文献中记载的特定神经行为任务中的性别差异表现。