Native language, gender, and functional organization of the auditory cortex

Whole-head magnetoencephalography was employed in 40 normal subjects to inv estigate whether the basic functional organization of the auditory cortex v aries with linguistic environment. Robust activations of the bilateral supr atemporal auditory cortices to 1-kHz pure tones, maximum at about 100 ms af ter stimulus onset, were studied in Finnish and German female and male subj ect groups with monolingual background. Activations elicited by the tones w ere mutually indistinguishable in German and Finnish women, In contrast, Ge rman men showed significantly stronger auditory responses to pure tones in the left, language-dominant hemisphere than Finnish men, We discuss the pos sibility that the prominent left-hemisphere activation in German males refl ects higher frequency resolution required for distinguishing between German than Finnish vowels and that the clear effect of native language in male b ut not in female auditory cortex derives from more pronounced functional la teralization in men. The present data suggest that the influence of native language can extend to auditory cortical processing of pure-tone stimuli wi th no linguistic content and that this effect is conspicuous in the male br ain.