Why Men Find Switching Tasks More Difficult Than Do Women

Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Study Authors:
Overall, women find it easier than men to switch between tasks. How and Why exactly their brains function differently in such situations has so far been unknown.  Recent research reveals that male brains appear to consume more energy when they need to shift attention. In addition to this, in men there is greater activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal areas of the brain as compared to women, as well as activation in some other brain areas which is not usually observed in women.

Such differences are typical of younger men and women aged 20 to 45, according to findings from experiments conducted by researchers Svetlana Kuptsova and Maria Ivanova of the HSE Neurolinguistic Laboratory, radiologists Alexey Petrushevsky and Oksana Fedina of the Centre for Speech Pathology and Neurorehabilitation, and Ludmila Zhavoronkova, Doctor of Biology and Senior Research Fellow of the RAS Institute of Higher Nervous Activity and Neurophysiology. The study’s findings have been published in Human Physiology, an international peer-reviewed journal.

Higher Activity, Slower Speed

Regardless of gender and age, task switching always involves activation in certain areas of the brain, more specifically, bilateral activation of the dorsolateral prefrontal areas, the inferior parietal lobes and the inferior occipital gyrus.

However, experiments conducted by Kuptsova et al. demonstrate that in women, task switching appears to require less brain power as compared to men, who showed greater activation in the dorsolateral prefrontal areas as well as the involvement of supplementary motor areas and insula, which was not observed in women.

“We know that stronger activation and involvement of supplementary areas of the brain are normally observed in subjects faced with complex tasks. Our findings suggest that women might find it easier than men to switch attention and their brains do not need to mobilise extra resources in doing so, as opposed to male brains,” explained Kuptsova.

The experiments involved 140 healthy volunteers, including 69 men and 71 women aged between 20 and 65. The subjects were asked to perform a variety of tasks. In one of the experiments using functional MRI, they were asked to perform a test that required switching attention between sorting objects according to shape (round or square) and number (one or two), in a pseudo-random order. In addition to this, neuropsychological tests were conducted, including the D-KEFS Trail Making Test to measure the subjects’ ability to switch attention and the Wechsler Memory Scale test to measure their audial and visual memory.

The use of functional MRI allowed the researchers not only to observe the subjects’ behaviour, but also to see what was going on in the brain as subjects switched between tasks and to detect differences in brain activation between men and women.

Age versus Gender

The researchers found that the gender differences in the extent of brain activation when switching between tasks only occurred in subjects younger than 45-50, while those aged 50 and older showed no gender differences either in brain activation or speed of task switching.

According to the researchers, older men and women – starting at the age of 45 in women and 55 in men – experienced both increased activation of key areas involved and mobilisation of additional brain resources.