Gender Differences in Brains’ Language Functions Found

Scientists have found the most convincing evidence yet that the brains of men and women work in dramatically different ways, at least in certain kinds of language functions.

When people are given the same word-rhyming task to perform, Yale researchers report in Wednesday’s issue of the journal Nature, males predominantly use only one region in the left side of the brain. Females use a much wider area in both sides.

The findings are “an extremely important milestone” in understanding language ability, learning disabilities and reading problems, said neuropsychologist G. Reid Lyon of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, which funded the study.

Rhyming tasks were emphasized, Lyon said, because they are purely phonological--that is, concerned with discerning the sounds of language elements. Difficulty in processing word sounds “may be the culprit in this thing called dyslexia.”

“How kids read words and break them into pieces is the key” to many learning problems. In addition, Lyon said, the findings mean “future studies of the neural mechanisms of language will need to take gender differences into account.”

It has long been known that sex hormones influence the way the brain develops, causing slight anatomical differences between males and females. Many scientists have also suspected there are sex-related functional differences, based on decades of medical data on responses to brain injury.