There is a large body of accumulated evidence from behavioral and neuroimaging studies regarding how and where in the brain we represent basic numerical information. A number of these studies have considered how numerical representations may differ between individuals according to their age or level of mathematical ability, but one issue rarely…

Early life stress (ES) significantly increases predisposition to psychopathologies. Cannabinoids may cause cognitive deficits and exacerbate the effects of ES. Nevertheless, the endocannabinoid system has been suggested as a therapeutic target for the treatment of stress- and anxiety-related disorders. Here we examined whether cannabinoids…

The electroencephalogram (EEG) was used to investigate variation in mental rotation (MR) strategies between males and females and different college majors. Beta activation was acquired from 40 participants (10 males and 10 females in physical science; 10 males and 10 females in social science) when performing the Vandenberg and Kuse (1978) mental…

Research has demonstrated that Long-Evans rats (LER) display superior mnemonic function over Wistar rats (WR). These differences are correlated with endogenous and input-dependent properties of the hippocampus. The present work sought to determine if juvenile pretraining might enhance hippocampal structural markers and if this would be associated…

Although previous findings point to the long-term impact of ethanol exposure during periadolescence on hippocampal-dependent learning tasks, comparisons considering different onset and exposure periods during this developmental range of ages are still needed. The aim of this experiment was to determine whether intermittent voluntary chronic…

The underlying cognitive and neural mechanisms of the ability to discriminate left from right are hardly explored. Clinical studies from patients with impairments of left-right discrimination (LRD) and neuroimaging data suggest that the left angular gyrus is particularly involved in LRD. Moreover, it is argued that the often reported sex…

The cognitive process of imaging an object turning around is called mental rotation. Many studies have been put forward analyzing mental rotation by means of event-related potentials (ERPs). Event-related potentials (ERPs) were measured during mental rotation of characters in a sample (N = 82) with a sufficient size to obtain even small effects. A…

Sex-related differences have been reported for performance and neural substrates on some working memory measures that carry a high cognitive load, including the popular n-back neuroimaging paradigm. Despite some evidence of a sex effect on the task, the influence of sex on performance represents a potential confound in neuroimaging research. The…

Numerous studies have focused on the distinction between categorical and coordinate spatial relations. Categorical relations are propositional and abstract, and often related to a left hemisphere advantage. Coordinate relations specify the metric information of the relative locations of objects, and can be linked to right hemisphere processing.…

A male advantage in spatial abilities is assumed to underlie their superior performance in complex mathematical problems. In this study we investigated whether sex differences in mental rotation (MR) tasks are related to female underachievement and whether training effects of a MR training can be generalized across achievers and underachievers.…

Neuro-imaging studies of intelligence implicate the importance of a parietal-frontal network. One unresolved issue is whether this network underlies a general factor of intelligence ("g") or other specific cognitive factors. A second unresolved issue is whether males and females use different parts of this network. Here we obtained intelligence…

Previous research suggests a relationship between spatial attention and phonological decoding in developmental dyslexia. The aim of this study was to examine differences between good and poor phonological decoders in the allocation of spatial attention to global and local levels of hierarchical stimuli. A further aim was to investigate the…

Hemispatial neglect is a common and disabling consequence of stroke. Previous reports examining the relationship between gender and the incidence of unilateral spatial neglect (USN) have included either a large numbers of patients with few neglect tests or small numbers of patients with multiple tests. To determine if USN was more common and/or…

The current study assessed the lateralization of function hypothesis (Rilea, S. L., Roskos-Ewoldsen, B., & Boles, D. (2004). "Sex differences in spatial ability: A lateralization of function approach." "Brain and Cognition," 56, 332-343) which suggested that it was the interaction of brain organization and the type of spatial task that led to sex…

Spatial ability research has been approached from several psychological vantages since its beginnings in the late 1800s. This contribution attempts a summation of spatial ability research, beginning with a historical vignette and a major section on each psychological approach including the psychometric, developmental, differential and information…