Abstract
A number of findings indicate gender differences in language-related functional hemispheric brain asymmetry. To test if such gender-specific laterality is already present at the level of vowel-processing, the auditory evoked magnetic field was recorded in healthy right-handed male and female participants in response to the German synthetic vowels [a], [e] and [i]. Female participants exhibited stronger N100m responses than male participants over the left hemisphere. This observation was highly reliable across repeated experimental sessions. The present lateralization shows that previous findings suggesting a stronger left-hemispheric dominance for verbal material in males than in females can not be generalized to basic speech elements. Furthermore, the present results support the importance of controlling for gender ratio in studies of phonetic processing.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Journal | Neuroscience Letters |
| Volume | 314 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| Pages (from-to) | 131-134 |
| Number of pages | 4 |
| ISSN | 0304-3940 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 16.11.2001 |
Funding
Research was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and the Volkswagen-Stiftung. The authors wish to thank Michaela Schlichtling, Ursula Lommen and Isabella Paul for their help during the data acquisition, Eugen Diesch for supplying the stimulus material and Nathaniel Pihama for correcting the manuscript.
Research Areas and Centers
- Academic Focus: Center for Brain, Behavior and Metabolism (CBBM)
