Gender Differences of Brain Activity in the Conflicts Based on Implicit Self-Esteem

Abstract

There are gender differences in global and domain-specific self-esteem and the incidence of some psychiatric disorders related to self-esteem, suggesting that there are gender differences in the neural basis underlying one's own self-esteem. We investigated gender differences in the brain activity while subjects (14 males and 12 females) performed an implicit self-esteem task, using fMRI. While ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) was significantly activated in females, medial and dorsomedial PFC (dmPFC) were activated in males in the incongruent condition (self = negative) compared with the congruent condition (self = positive). Additionally, scores on the explicit self-esteem test were negatively correlated with vmPFC activity in females and positively correlated with dmPFC activity in males. Furthermore, the functional relationships among the regions found by direct gender comparisons were discussed based on the somatic-marker model. These showed that, compared to males, females more firmly store even the incongruent associations as part of their schematic self-knowledge, and such associations automatically activate the neural networks for emotional response and control, in which vmPFC plays a central role. This may explain female cognitive/behavioral traits; females have more tendency to ruminate more often than males, which sometimes results in a prolonged negative affect.

Extraversion modulates functional connectivity hubs of resting‐state brain networks

“…Furthermore, extraversion was associated with decreased RSFC of the SFG with the MPFC and dACC. The SFG, along with MPFC and ACC, was reported to be involved in processing the self (Wuyun et al ., ), especially in the self‐esteem trait (Eisenberger, Inagaki, Muscatell, Haltom, & Leary, ; Miyamoto & Kikuchi, ; Onoda et al ., ), the result of individual self‐assessment. The positive connectivity between the dACC and the MPFC for the lower trait self‐esteem group supports the involvement in self‐esteem (Onoda et al ., ).…”

Impact of self-esteem and sex on stress reactions

“…Self-esteem is the value we place on ourselves, with high levels associated with a positive self-evaluation and a positive self-attitude 1 , 2 . It constitutes an important psychological resource: High levels of self-esteem are protective against adverse mental health outcomes and are considered an important resilience factor 3 , 4 .…”

“…The neural basis of self-esteem has been explored in a variety of affective neuroimaging tasks and includes areas involved in cognitive control, affective and self-referential processing, such as lateral and medial frontal cortical areas, anterior and posterior cingulate gyrus (ACC, PCC), superior temporal areas, anterior insula and precuneus in mixed samples 10 , 11 . For an implicit self-esteem task, sex differences were reported in medial and lateral frontal areas 2 .…”

“…Notably, neural areas associated with self-esteem 2 , 10 , 11 widely overlap with regions of the stress network 19 – 21 . For some of these areas, such as the amygdala, the anterior insula, lateral prefrontal areas and the PCC, sex differences during stress processing have also been reported 22 , 23 .…”

Does self-recognition of one’s own fall recruit genuine bodily crisis-related brain activity?

“…Such findings indicate that one's own body sustains a distinct internal representation and that the perception-action matching system is optimally tuned for the observation of one's own actions. We would therefore expect that the internal representation of one's own movements and associated interoceptive representations, which are essential for survival, would be more activated while viewing images of one's own body in an unstable state (from the third person perspective), as compared to viewing the bodies of others [26][27][28][29][30] . We further reasoned [26][27][28][29][30] that the brain activity observed while viewing such images would closely approximate that which occurs in response to in-vivo body instability (e.g., slipping suddenly and almost falling down).…”