Department of Psychology, University of Salzburg, Salzburg, Austria; Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Salzburg, Salzburg, Austria.
Department of Psychology, University of Salzburg, Salzburg, Austria; Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Salzburg, Salzburg, Austria.
Brain Lang. 2020 Aug;207:104814. doi: 10.1016/j.bandl.2020.104814. Epub 2020 Jun 2.
Sex differences in cognitive functions are heavily debated. Recent work suggests that sex differences do stem from different processing strategies utilized by men and women. While these processing strategies are likely reflected in different brain networks, so far the link between brain networks and processing strategies remains speculative. In the present study we seek for the first time to link sex differences in brain activation patterns to sex differences in processing strategies utilizing a semantic verbal fluency task in a large sample of 35 men and 35 women, all scanned thrice. For verbal fluency, strategies of clustering and switching have been described. Our results show that men show higher activation in the brain network supporting clustering, while women show higher activation in the brain network supporting switching. Furthermore, converging evidence from activation results, lateralization indices and connectivity analyses suggests that men recruit the right hemisphere more strongly during clustering, but women during switching. These results may explain findings of differential performance and strategy-use in previous behavioral studies.
性别在认知功能上的差异一直备受争议。最近的研究表明，这种性别差异确实源于男性和女性使用的不同处理策略。虽然这些处理策略可能反映在不同的大脑网络中，但迄今为止，大脑网络和处理策略之间的联系仍只是推测。在本研究中，我们首次利用一项语义流畅性任务，在一个由 35 名男性和 35 名女性组成的大样本中，对大脑激活模式与处理策略的性别差异进行了研究，所有被试都接受了三次扫描。对于言语流畅性，已经描述了聚类和转换两种策略。我们的研究结果表明，男性在支持聚类的大脑网络中表现出更高的激活水平，而女性在支持转换的大脑网络中表现出更高的激活水平。此外，激活结果、侧化指数和连通性分析的综合证据表明，男性在聚类时更多地调动右脑，而女性在转换时更多地调动左脑。这些结果可能解释了之前行为研究中发现的不同表现和策略使用的差异。
