Sex differences in activations to the sight of faces, scenes, body parts and tools in visual and non-visual cortical regions leading to the human hippocampus

In a large Human Connectome Project dataset of 504 females and 452 males performing a 0-back memory task with visual images using the HCP-MultiModalParcellation, faces activated some key cortical regions more (using FDR correction) in females than males, including in the left hemisphere the fusiform face cortex and inferior temporal visual cortex TE2p; and visual motion regions in the MT+ complex. The sight of scenes activated more in males than females scene-related cortical regions including the medial parahippocampal scene (or place) regions such as PHA2 and earlier regions in the ventromedial cortical visual scene stream such as POS2, with differences found in both hemispheres. The sight of body parts activated more in females than males the inferior temporal visual cortex TE2p, some MT+ visual motion regions such as FST and PH, and also the perirhinal ‘What’ visual stream input to the hippocampal system via the perirhinal cortex, PeEc, in the left hemisphere. The sight of tools activated more in males than females and in the left hemisphere anterior temporal lobe regions such as TE2a, and regions that provide ‘What’ inputs to the hippocampal system, the lateral parahippocampal cortex and perirhinal cortex, PeEc. These cortical specialisations are likely to be relevant to behavioral differences for females compared to males in the processing of socially relevant stimuli such as faces and body parts; and to behavioral differences for males compared to females in the processing of spatial scenes and tools, with behavioral sex differences for scenes vs. faces present in these participants.