Phd in PHD PROGRAM IN BEHAVIORAL NEUROSCIENCE

PhD program:: XXXIX
email: sofia.pepe@uniroma1.it
phone: +393339988167

supervisor: Prof.ssa Laura Piccardi

11573/1656167 - 2022 - The hippocampus is responsible for encoding both spatial and temporal aspects of information. Given that the hippocampus is dimorphic between the sexes, it might stand to reason that if there are differences in spatial ability, there are also differences in temporal ability, but there isn't much evidence to explore this. In both abilities it has been possible to verify that in different tasks there are significant differences in performance according to the age and sex of the participants. For this reason, the objective of this study was to verify whether dimorphism occurs according to biological sex in temporal perception tasks. For this, 55 participants were evaluated, of whom 25 were men and 30 women, all of them students at the University of Almería. This evaluation consisted of carrying out two tests of temporal perception similar to each other in the programming. They were presented with an object (in one task a car and in the other a square) that passed from the left to the right of the screen, having a different speed on each trial. In the center appeared a rectangle that caused the object to disappear for a variable time. The participants had to decide if the speed of the object was higher or lower in the invisible part when compared to the visible part. The results showed that there were differences between men and women in both tests, with men making fewer errors. This seems to be in line with the results found in the evaluation of spatial ability, which could indicate that there are apparently differences in the hippocampus between men and women. Another reason why these differences could appear is the use of strategies, both for spatial and temporal skills, different between both sexes. Future works can extend this evidence through the use of electroencephalography (EEG).