TY - JOUR
T1 - Brain structures in the sciences and humanities
AU - Takeuchi, Hikaru
AU - Taki, Yasuyuki
AU - Sekiguchi, Atsushi
AU - Nouchi, Rui
AU - Kotozaki, Yuka
AU - Nakagawa, Seishu
AU - Miyauchi, Carlos Makoto
AU - Iizuka, Kunio
AU - Yokoyama, Ryoichi
AU - Shinada, Takamitsu
AU - Yamamoto, Yuki
AU - Hanawa, Sugiko
AU - Araki, Tsuyoshi
AU - Hashizume, Hiroshi
AU - Sassa, Yuko
AU - Kawashima, Ryuta
N1 - Funding Information:
We respectfully thank Yuki Yamada for operating the MRI scanner, and Haruka Nouchi for being an examiner of psychological tests. We also thank the study participants, the other examiners of psychological tests, and all our colleagues in the Institute of Development, Aging and Cancer and in Tohoku University for their support. This study was supported by JST/RISTEX, JST/CREST. This study was supported by a Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B) (KAKENHI 23700306) from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology. The authors would like to thank Enago ( http://www.enago.jp ) for the English language review.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2014, The Author(s).
PY - 2015/11/26
Y1 - 2015/11/26
N2 - The areas of academic interest (sciences or humanities) and area of study have been known to be associated with a number of factors associated with autistic traits. However, despite the vast amount of literature on the psychological and physiological characteristics associated with faculty membership, brain structural characteristics associated with faculty membership have never been investigated directly. In this study, we used voxel-based morphometry to investigate differences in regional gray matter volume (rGMV)/regional white matter volume (rWMV) between science and humanities students to test our hypotheses that brain structures previously robustly shown to be altered in autistic subjects are related to differences in faculty membership. We examined 312 science students (225 males and 87 females) and 179 humanities students (105 males and 74 females). Whole-brain analyses of covariance revealed that after controlling for age, sex, and total intracranial volume, the science students had significantly larger rGMV in an anatomical cluster around the medial prefrontal cortex and the frontopolar area, whereas the humanities students had significantly larger rWMV in an anatomical cluster mainly concentrated around the right hippocampus. These anatomical structures have been linked to autism in previous studies and may mediate cognitive functions that characterize differences in faculty membership. The present results may support the ideas that autistic traits and characteristics of the science students compared with the humanities students share certain characteristics from neuroimaging perspectives. This study improves our understanding of differences in faculty membership which is the link among cognition, biological factors, disorders, and education (academia).
AB - The areas of academic interest (sciences or humanities) and area of study have been known to be associated with a number of factors associated with autistic traits. However, despite the vast amount of literature on the psychological and physiological characteristics associated with faculty membership, brain structural characteristics associated with faculty membership have never been investigated directly. In this study, we used voxel-based morphometry to investigate differences in regional gray matter volume (rGMV)/regional white matter volume (rWMV) between science and humanities students to test our hypotheses that brain structures previously robustly shown to be altered in autistic subjects are related to differences in faculty membership. We examined 312 science students (225 males and 87 females) and 179 humanities students (105 males and 74 females). Whole-brain analyses of covariance revealed that after controlling for age, sex, and total intracranial volume, the science students had significantly larger rGMV in an anatomical cluster around the medial prefrontal cortex and the frontopolar area, whereas the humanities students had significantly larger rWMV in an anatomical cluster mainly concentrated around the right hippocampus. These anatomical structures have been linked to autism in previous studies and may mediate cognitive functions that characterize differences in faculty membership. The present results may support the ideas that autistic traits and characteristics of the science students compared with the humanities students share certain characteristics from neuroimaging perspectives. This study improves our understanding of differences in faculty membership which is the link among cognition, biological factors, disorders, and education (academia).
KW - Academia
KW - Area of study
KW - Cognitive functions
KW - Humanities
KW - Sciences
KW - Voxel-based morphometry
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U2 - 10.1007/s00429-014-0857-y
DO - 10.1007/s00429-014-0857-y
M3 - Article
C2 - 25079346
AN - SCOPUS:84942373269
SN - 1863-2653
VL - 220
SP - 3295
EP - 3305
JO - Brain Structure and Function
JF - Brain Structure and Function
IS - 6
ER -