Sex differences Flashcards
(20 cards)
what kind of effect size does research on sex differences have?
SMALL
which organ has the largest and the least largest sex-related difference in size?
thyroid at 25% and brain at 12% respectively
who has a greater gray matter to white matter ratio?
females. larger brains have greater white matter volume, no matter if you are male or female
what two brain structures were seen to have the first sexual dimorphism between males and females
hippocampus and amygdala
what is the only brian structure larger in females?
cortical thickness of gray matter and it has been shown to change with training and learning and can be more influenced by experiences and socialization
difference between allometry and isometry in studied
allometry means non-linear relationships. this suggests that when we are studying something of the body we understand they have general sizes but they are also different sizes depending on the size of the person.
—body and brain structures are proportional to someone’s body or brain size and they are scaling to that size.
isometry: controlling for ICV & TBV assumes the of the brain and it states that all structures are linear in size to the overall brain
examples of behavioural differences
toy and activity preference, playmate preference, career choice, personality, sexuality and gender identity
examples of cognitive differences
visuospatial cognition(typically has a large effect size - male) verbal fluency - female, emotional processing - female, math performance - male
functional differences in the brain (male brains)
male brains are lateralized this means that they have more communication WITHIN their hemisphere rather than ACROSS hemispheres (this is not a replicated finding)
what is the verbal fluency task
example of a functional MRI task and participants when they see a letter appear must think and wrote down all the words they can that start with that letter
fmri research has failed to uncover meaningful differences in the neural circuits used to process or generate language between men and women
spatial processing is inconsistent… how?
there is high parietal activation in males and high frontal activation in females BUT performance differences are not always replicated
what is a reverse inference?
backwards reasoning to infer behavioural associations without directly testing
—stereotyped-inspiring: sex/gender stereotyped tasks can cause researchers to incorrectly assign meaning to findings (jumping to conclusions)
inconsistent differences during emotion tasks
circuits for emotional processing is more similar than it is different between males and females
what measurement provided researchers with the volume of the brains grey and white matter ONLY
total brain volume (TBV)
what animal models have been important to furthering our understanding of sex in the brain
phoenix’s g.pigs, four core genotypes mouse, songbirds, rat sexually dimorphism nucleus
if different regions are alleometric in brain size why are we controlling for age-matching of the participants?
those of similar age have similar brain volumes in both male and female participants and from here we can find significant brain region, behavioural and structural differences between the sexes
the most sexually differentiated region of the brain is 60% larger… what region is this?
third interstitial nucleus of the anterior hypothalamus at 1.6 folds larger than
research on sex-related differences in brain structure and behaviour often relate the differences to what primary hypothesis
prenatal androgen exposure hypothesis
according to Jordan young which measure has been associated with prenatal hormones in female participants
sex-typed interests
regional sex differences in anaimsl neurobiology
songbirds have a larger vocal area that is 6x larger
sexually dimorphism nucleus: this region is 5x larger in male rats and it is related to sexual behaviour
in humans the SDN is the third interstitial nucleus of the anterior hypothalamus
—60% volume difference in males but overall a very small structure within the anterior hypothalamus
—this is the largest sexual dimorphism found in humans
