Study: Boys' and Girls' Brain Processing Differs

July 10 -- It may not provide an answer to why men refuse to stop and ask for directions when they're lost, but new research reveals that pre-pubescent girls and boys may use different parts of their brain as they navigate their way through life.

The new study also reveals that girls may not only be able to better detect small changes in expression but that the different sexes process facial expressions differently. It means, researchers say, that men and women who suffer brain injuries may benefit from being provided with more focused treatments.

While boys and girls performed equally well in identifying facial expressions, researchers found boys use more of the right hemisphere parts of their brain and girls use more of the left. The report will be published in the July issue of Neuropsychology.

Performed Equally, But Differently

"We know that the right brain processes things like special configurations and is responsible for grasping things like geography and knowing where you are — spatial configurations," said one of the authors of the study, Erik Everhart, assistant professor of Psychology at East Carolina University. "Boys and girls performed equally well in the test but boys showed significantly greater right- vs. left-hemisphere activity during the test."

"It's possible that boys process faces at a right-hemisphere level and girls process them at a more local level," Everhart said. "It suggests that girls may be better at making fine distinctions when it comes to processing emotions on face."

The study showed that the brains of boys and girls are organized differently prior to puberty. Earlier research had shown that the brains of adult men and women are organized differently, according to Everhart.

In the study, children viewed images of faces in a slideshow as researchers used an electroencephalograph to measure the children's brain waves in one part of the study. In another part of the study, researchers tallied children's accuracy at identifying the emotions portrayed on the faces and their response times.