Home

Brain thickness may affect spatial skills

Submitted by anthony on Sat, 2008-12-20 20:46.

Article here. Excerpt:

'IOWA CITY, Iowa, Dec. 19 (UPI) -- The greater parietal lobe surface area in male brains is directly related to better performance on mental rotation tasks, U.S. researchers said.
...
Magnetic resonance imaging showed about a 10 percent difference in parietal lobe surface area -- 43 square centimeters for men and 40 square centimeters for women.

"It's important to note that it isn't that women cannot do the mental rotation tasks, but they appear to do them slower, and neither men nor women perform the tasks perfectly," study lead author Tim Koscik said in a statement.

Study co-author Dr. Peg Nopoulos said while the way the brain performs a task may differ between genders, the big question remains whether this is nature or nurture. Nopoulos predicts "if we eventually see both a strong performance and parietal lobe structural difference in children, it would support a biological, not just environmental, effect."