The influence of sex differences and individual task performance on brain activation during planning

Several studies have attempted to identify the neuronal basis of sex differences in cognition. However, group differences in cognitive ability rather than genuine neurocognitive differences between the sexes may account for their results. Here, we compare with functional magnetic resonance imaging the relation between gender, individual task performance, and planning-related brain activation. Men and women preselected to display identical performance scores showed a strong relation between individual task performance and activation of the right dorsolateral prefrontal and right inferior parietal cortex activation during a visuospatial planning task. No gender-specific activations were found. However, a different pattern emerged when subjects had to execute the motor responses to the problems. Better performance was associated with right dorsolateral prefrontal and right parahippocampal activations, and females exhibited a stronger right hippocampal activation than males. These findings underline that an individual's performance level rather than his or her sex largely determines the neuronal activation patterns during higher-level cognition.