Department of Psychology, Boston College, United States.
Department of Psychology, Boston College, United States.
Neuroimage. 2019 Oct 1;199:626-634. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2019.06.027. Epub 2019 Jun 14.
It is generally assumed that identical neural regions mediate the same cognitive functions in females and males. However, anatomic and molecular sex differences exist in the brain, including in regions associated with long-term memory, which suggests there may be functional differences. The present functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) investigation aimed to identify the differences and similarities in brain activity between females and males during spatial long-term memory. During encoding, abstract shapes were presented to the left or right of fixation. During retrieval, shapes were presented at fixation and participants made "old-left" or "old-right" judgments. For both females and males, spatial memory hits versus misses produced activity in regions commonly associated with visual long-term memory; however, the activations were almost completely distinct between the sexes. An interaction analysis revealed sex-specific activity for males in visual processing regions, the left putamen, the right caudate nucleus, and bilateral cerebellum, and sex-specific activity for females in the parietal cortex. A targeted anatomic region-of-interest (ROI) analysis identified sex-specific activity for males and females in the left hippocampus and language processing cortex, respectively. A multi-voxel pattern correlation analysis within functional ROIs between all pairs of participants showed greater within-sex than between-sex correlations, indicating the differential activations were due to sex differences rather than other individual differences between groups. These results indicate that spatial long-term memory is mediated by largely different brain regions in females and males. These findings have major implications for the field of cognitive neuroscience, where it is common practice to collapse across sex.
一般认为，女性和男性的相同神经区域介导相同的认知功能。然而，大脑存在解剖和分子性别差异，包括与长期记忆相关的区域，这表明可能存在功能差异。本项功能磁共振成像（fMRI）研究旨在确定女性和男性在空间长期记忆过程中大脑活动的差异和相似之处。在编码阶段，将抽象形状呈现于注视点的左侧或右侧。在检索阶段，将形状呈现于注视点，参与者做出“旧左”或“旧右”判断。对于女性和男性，空间记忆的击中与未击中在与视觉长期记忆相关的区域产生活动；然而，这些激活在性别之间几乎完全不同。交互分析显示，男性在视觉处理区域、左侧壳核、右侧尾状核和双侧小脑有特定于性别的活动，而女性在顶叶皮层有特定于性别的活动。针对特定解剖区域的兴趣区（ROI）分析确定了男性和女性的左海马体和语言处理皮层的特定于性别的活动。在功能 ROI 内对所有参与者的体素模式相关性进行的多变量分析表明，同性别之间的相关性大于不同性别之间的相关性，这表明差异激活是由于性别差异而不是组间的其他个体差异所致。这些结果表明，空间长期记忆是由女性和男性的大脑区域介导的。这些发现对认知神经科学领域具有重大意义，因为在该领域中，跨性别合并是常见的做法。
