Effects of age and gender on neural correlates of emotion imagery

Abstract

Mental imagery is part of people's own internal processing and plays an important role in everyday life, cognition and pathology. The neural network supporting mental imagery is bottom‐up modulated by the imagery content. Here, we examined the complex associations of gender and age with the neural mechanisms underlying emotion imagery. We assessed the brain circuits involved in emotion mental imagery (vs. action imagery), controlled by a letter detection task on the same stimuli, chosen to ensure attention to the stimuli and to discourage imagery, in 91 men and women aged 14–65 years using fMRI. In women, compared with men, emotion imagery significantly increased activation within the right putamen, which is involved in emotional processing. Increasing age, significantly decreased mental imagery‐related activation in the left insula and cingulate cortex, areas involved in awareness of ones' internal states, and it significantly decreased emotion verbs‐related activation in the left putamen, which is part of the limbic system. This finding suggests a top‐down mechanism by which gender and age, in interaction with bottom‐up effect of type of stimulus, or directly, can modulate the brain mechanisms underlying mental imagery.

Increased functional integration of emotional control network in late adulthood

“…This finding aligns with the increased prefrontal recruitment in emotion regulation tasks that is observed in older adults ( Berboth & Morawetz, 2021 ; Nashiro et al, 2012 ). Particularly the right MFG, bilateral IPL, and cingulate nodes of this network showed increased integration in later life, all of which have been demonstrated to be crucial in the regulation of emotions and for emotional wellbeing and stability ( Winecoff et al, 2011 ; Tomasino et al, 2022 ; Glinka et al, 2020 ; Williams et al, 2006 ; Brassen et al, 2011; Ziaei et al, 2017 ; Scharnowski et al, 2020). We suggest that as the emotion regulation network becomes more integrated, there is an enhanced transmission of information to the other networks ( Sporns, 2013 ) involved in generating and processing the emotional responses, leading to improved emotion regulation in late adulthood, which consequently have beneficial effects on mood ( Eldesouky & English, 2018 ; Urry & Gross, 2010 ).…”

A Review of AI Cloud and Edge Sensors, Methods, and Applications for the Recognition of Emotional, Affective and Physiological States

“…For instance, these authors used the Granger causality test to establish how a person’s cultural background and situation affect emotion. The conclusions drawn by [ 513 ] propose a top-down mechanism where gender and age can impact the brain mechanisms behind emotive imagery, either directly or by interacting with bottom-up stimuli.…”