Sex differences in brain functional organization for semantic processing and pragmatic language

BENDERSKI, MARIANA; LOMLODJIAN, CAROLINA; SABATTE, JULIANA; GARGIULO, MERCEDES; KOCHEN, SILVIA; ALBA FERRARA, L.

Congreso; Society for Neuroscience 2018; 2018

Introduction: Sex differences in cognitive abilities are a relatively popular topic that has been studied across various domains. Increasing evidence supports the existence of sex differences in the structural and functional organization of the brain. A long- held hypothesis proposes that (beyond cultural, historical, social and environmental factors) there are biological sex differences in the functional organization of the brain for language networks, especially those supporting higher linguistic functions. Purpose: To study patterns of activation of accessory language areas in both sex. Methods: 19 normal, right-handed subjects (9 women and 10 men), mean age 32.66, were studied by fMRI during a semantic categorization task (semantic categorization vs. letter categorization as baseline) and pragmatic language task (figurative sentence comprehension vs. literal sentencecomprehension as a baseline) on a Siemens Trio 3T scanner. Randomized effects were analyzed with SPM12, computing a BOLD contrast image for each subject and comparing both groups using t tests. Results: All the participants had a performance significantly higher than the chance level. The results reported were obtained with a Punc4. All the subjects activated, in both hemispheres, clusters surrounding the pars triangularis, supramarginal gyrus and orbitofrontal regions in the semantic task vs semantic baseline. For figurative language comprehension minus baseline, activation included T1 anterior and posterior, pars triangularis, and F3 opercular, bilaterally. Comparisons between groups showed that brain activation in males was lateralized leftwards, while women activated similar areas in both hemispheres. Conclusion: These data support the increasing evidence about sex differences in the neural correlates of higher order language processing, being males strongly lateralized compared to females.