Question

Which of the following statements is true about the gender differences in disorganized thought and speech symptoms of schizophrenia?

a) Women with schizophrenia tend to show more severe difficulties in language than do men with schizophrenia

b) Brain abnormalities associated with schizophrenia may not affect women’s language and thought as much as they do men's because women can use both sides of their brain to compensate for problems

c) Compared to women, language deficits are less apparent in men with schizophrenia coming to the fact that language is controlled more ____in men.

d) Language is more localized in men, so when the side of the brain associated with language are affected by schizophrenia, men are better able to compensate for the deficits.

Answer 1

b) Brain abnormalities associated with schizophrenia may not affect women’s language and thought as much as they do men's because women can use both sides of their brain to compensate for problems

Men with schizophrenia tend to show more severe deficits in language than women do, possibly because language is controlled more bilaterally (both sides of the brain) in women than in men.

It is interesting to note that language functions (e.g., semantic fluency) and related brain regions (e.g., Heschl’s gyrus and the planum temporale), in which sex differences have been reported in healthy adults, are aberrant in schizophrenia. Moreover, as with healthy adults, research with schizophrenia patients has demonstrated sex differences in some aspects of verbal functions. Male schizophrenia patients performed more poorly on measures of verbal learning, verbal fluency, and verbal memory, compared to female schizophrenia subjects, although findings were not consistent. Male patients had an advantage on spatial relative to language tasks, compared to female patients, who performed similarly across these domains.

Other studies includes some inconsistencies that raise questions about the general proposition of gender differences in cognition in schizophrenia. For example, some studies have found worse cognitive performance among female patients or an absence of significant sex differences on measures of verbal IQ and language. However, in a number of these latter studies, adjustments were made for age at illness onset, which may have attenuated potential sex effects, given that age of onset is known to be earlier in male patients than in female patients.

It is also possible that phonology—an aspect of language that ordinarily tends to be more left-lateralized functionally and more reliant on anterior functions (e.g., frontal/executive control) than aspects of language that are more evenly distributed across hemispheres (e.g., semantics) and that are believed to be reliant on both anterior (frontal and posterior (temporal) language regions is less affected in male patients than in females, given the association with increased left asymmetry in planum temporale in male patients. In contrast, findings in female patients, who as females are expected to show greater frontal and temporal symmetry and have shown greater asymmetry with increases in the right planum temporale, suggest the potential for enhanced ability to recruit right hemisphere posterior regions for semantic task performance.