Reduced emotion processing efficiency in healthy males relative to females

Abstract

This study examined sex differences in categorization of facial emotions and activation of brain regions supportive of those classifications. In Experiment 1, performance on the Facial Emotion Perception Test (FEPT) was examined among 75 healthy females and 63 healthy males. Females were more accurate in the categorization of fearful expressions relative to males. In Experiment 2, 3T functional magnetic resonance imaging data were acquired for a separate sample of 21 healthy females and 17 healthy males while performing the FEPT. Activation to neutral facial expressions was subtracted from activation to sad, angry, fearful and happy facial expressions. Although females and males demonstrated activation in some overlapping regions for all emotions, many regions were exclusive to females or males. For anger, sad and happy, males displayed a larger extent of activation than did females, and greater height of activation was detected in diffuse cortical and subcortical regions. For fear, males displayed greater activation than females only in right postcentral gyri. With one exception in females, performance was not associated with activation. Results suggest that females and males process emotions using different neural pathways, and these differences cannot be explained by performance variations.

Age and Gender Modulate the Neural Circuitry Supporting Facial Emotion Processing in Adults with Major Depressive Disorder

“…As a control task, blocks of animal photographs were presented, requiring categorization into one of four categories (i.e., dogs, cats, primates, birds). Functional neuroimaging acquisition parameters were consistent with prior studies in our laboratory (e.g., 2, 9, 23). …”

“…Gender-specific decrements in facial emotion perception accuracy in MDD have been reported (6): Women with MDD were less accurate at detecting emotions than both HC women and men with MDD, whereas men with MDD performed similarly to HC men. Furthermore, gender differences in emotion recognition accuracy in healthy adults are well-established, favoring women (7), as well as in the neural circuitry supporting emotion processing (8, 9). These findings, combined with evidence for gender-specific disruption in emotion processing accuracy in MDD, underscore the critical need to evaluate the role of gender in disrupted emotion processing in MDD.…”

The female advantage: sex as a possible protective factor against emotion recognition impairment following traumatic brain injury

“…For instance, studying the combined effect of sex and TBI on emotion recognition at different points post-injury (e.g., acute/sub-acute vs. chronic) might help clarify whether these differences are the effect of hormonal or brain-structure-related sex differences (Merz et al, 2012; Veroude, Jolles, Croiset, & Krabbendam, 2014; Weisenbach et al, 2014; Welborn et al, 2009) that might serve as protective factors in the acute phase of a brain injury, or of different responses offered by the social environment to men and women following brain injury. Measuring sex-hormones levels, even during the chronic phase, might provide information on the relationship between endocrine factors and emotion recognition abilities, and indicate whether men with TBI might benefit from pharmacological treatment to improve their affect recognition performance.…”

“…There is a long history of research showing a female advantage in recognizing emotions (Kret & De Gelder, 2012; Montagne, Kessels, Frigerio, de Haan, & Perrett, 2005; Weisenbach et al, 2014) beginning in infancy and continuing throughout the lifespan (Kessels, Montagne, Hendriks, Perrett, & de Haan, 2014; McClure, 2000). Thus, women with TBI might have an advantage that would protect them from affect recognition impairments, while men with TBI might be more vulnerable.…”

Sex Difference in Fear: From Epidemiological, Neuroimaging, and Animal Studies

“…Ceyhan, E. & Ceyhan, A., 2007;Choul et al, 2004;Tsai et al, 2007PTSD Germain et al, 2006Lensi et al, 1996Reed & Wittchen, 1998Bezerra De Menezes et al, 2008 Roberson-Nay et al, Turk et al, 1998 Bezerra Weisenbach et al, 2012Cahill et al, 2001Cahill et al, 2004;Canli et al, 2002Derntl et al, 2009Dickie & Armony, 2008Ohrmann et al, 2010PTSD Felmingham et al 2010 PTSD …”