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Sex Differences and Autism: Brain Function during Verbal Fluency and Mental Rotation

Overview of attention for article published in PLOS ONE, June 2012
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About this Attention Score

  • In the top 25% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age (89th percentile)
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age and source (86th percentile)

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17 X users
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2 Facebook pages
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1 Redditor

Citations

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61 Dimensions

Readers on

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228 Mendeley
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Title
Sex Differences and Autism: Brain Function during Verbal Fluency and Mental Rotation
Published in
PLOS ONE, June 2012
DOI 10.1371/journal.pone.0038355
Pubmed ID
Authors

Felix D. C. C. Beacher, Eugenia Radulescu, Ludovico Minati, Simon Baron-Cohen, Michael V. Lombardo, Meng-Chuan Lai, Anne Walker, Dawn Howard, Marcus A. Gray, Neil A. Harrison, Hugo D. Critchley

Abstract

Autism spectrum conditions (ASC) affect more males than females. This suggests that the neurobiology of autism: 1) may overlap with mechanisms underlying typical sex-differentiation or 2) alternately reflect sex-specificity in how autism is expressed in males and females. Here we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to test these alternate hypotheses. Fifteen men and fourteen women with Asperger syndrome (AS), and sixteen typically developing men and sixteen typically developing women underwent fMRI during performance of mental rotation and verbal fluency tasks. All groups performed the tasks equally well. On the verbal fluency task, despite equivalent task-performance, both males and females with AS showed enhanced activation of left occipitoparietal and inferior prefrontal activity compared to controls. During mental rotation, there was a significant diagnosis-by-sex interaction across occipital, temporal, parietal, middle frontal regions, with greater activation in AS males and typical females compared to AS females and typical males. These findings suggest a complex relationship between autism and sex that is differentially expressed in verbal and visuospatial domains.

X Demographics

X Demographics

The data shown below were collected from the profiles of 17 X users who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 228 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
United States 3 1%
Netherlands 1 <1%
Brazil 1 <1%
Chile 1 <1%
United Kingdom 1 <1%
Israel 1 <1%
Unknown 220 96%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Student > Ph. D. Student 50 22%
Student > Bachelor 34 15%
Researcher 28 12%
Student > Master 27 12%
Student > Postgraduate 14 6%
Other 36 16%
Unknown 39 17%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Psychology 77 34%
Neuroscience 38 17%
Medicine and Dentistry 19 8%
Agricultural and Biological Sciences 15 7%
Linguistics 4 2%
Other 22 10%
Unknown 53 23%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 13. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 21 April 2015.
All research outputs
#2,606,284
of 23,835,032 outputs
Outputs from PLOS ONE
#32,925
of 203,548 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#17,049
of 168,964 outputs
Outputs of similar age from PLOS ONE
#537
of 3,851 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 23,835,032 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done well and is in the 89th percentile: it's in the top 25% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 203,548 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 15.5. This one has done well, scoring higher than 83% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 168,964 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done well, scoring higher than 89% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 3,851 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done well, scoring higher than 86% of its contemporaries.