Gender-related strategies for solving visuospatial tasks

Studies of 34 subjects (of which 16 were men) using a gender-related differences model addressed the mechanisms forming two strategies for solution of a visuospatial construction task. While there were no gender-related differences in the effectiveness of performing the construction task, the patterns of evoked activity in men and women were different. In men, the early response in the parietal cortex was linked with spatial transformation of the figure: the greater the rotation of the constituent parts, the greater the amplitude of the P1 wave, while errors were associated with decreases in P1 amplitude. In women, no cortical correlates of the rotation of parts were seen, though there was an increase in the negativity of N150 in EP in the occipital and inferior temporal areas of the cortex on transformation of the whole figure into the set of its component parts. These data are assessed in the light of concepts of the gender specificity of representations of the visual space and the cerebral organization of different strategies of visuospatial activity. © 2014 Springer Science+Business Media.