Burman and Booth (2008) searched for brain activation differences by sex that could explain the persistent performance differences on language tasks between boys and girls. Burman and Booth's fMRI study scanned 62 children (50% male) during rhyming and spelling tasks presented in written or verbal form. They concluded that boys and girls were ( Read more... )

Reiss et al (2008) used fMRI to examine differences in brain activation during video game play. The simplified video game used in the experiment was not explained, but all the participants figured out the object of the game, and seemed motivated to succeed. Greater activation in the "reward systems" of the brain, and areas associated with ( Read more... )

Psychologist Shelly Taylor said "it was like a big light went on" in regards to her model of female coping (Azar, 2000). Taylor et al's 2000 model suggests that while "fight-or-flight" may be the physiological response for both males and females in response to stress, behavior tells a different story. Taylor's model, based in evolutionary ( Read more... )

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Jiang et al (2006) tested the effect of "invisible" erotic pictures on the attention of gay/bisexual and heterosexual males and females. After comparing attraction/repulsion to male or female erotic stumuli, Jiang et al found that while gay men responded like heterosexual women to the suppressed images, gay/bisexual women responded in between this ( Read more... )

Larry Cahill's 2006 neuroscience review points out that functional and structural differences between male and female brains may not always point to behavioral differences. One interesting example of this is Hugdahl et al (2006) study which found no sex difference in mental rotation tasks on either response time or accuracy, but did find ( Read more... )

Hearing a stranger's voice, we tend to automatically assign the voice a gender. Belin et al (2004) suggest that perception of identity data gleaned from vocal cues may have processing similar to that for face recognition. While the perception of the speaker gender has often been characterized as a "right-brain" function, Schirmer and Kotz (2006) ( Read more... )

Adult women seem to have more white matter than men (see "Does Size Matter", 11/1/06), a finding that is popularly used to explain gender differences in cognitive processes. Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) is a MRI technique that is being used to examine white matter connectivity, and as such, may have extensive applications in studying sex ( Read more... )

Humans make judgements about the perceived gender of other humans so quickly that we are usually not aware of having done it. What factors influence these snap decisions? Ganel et al (2002) suggest that identity and gender are inseparably linked in cognitive facial recognition. This is in contrast to other models that suggest identity and sex ( Read more... )

Azim et al (2005) examined differences in brain activity during humor appreciation using fMRI. Azim et al suggest that greater mesolimbic activation may indicate "greater reward network response and possibly less reward expectation" from humor in females. Shammi and Stuss (2003) focus on cognitive aging processes, and note that humor appreciation ( Read more... )