Sex and gender affect the social brain: Beyond simplicity

Abstract

As the most fascinating, complex, and dynamic part of our organism, the human brain is shaped by many interacting factors that not only are of neurobiological (including sex hormones) and environmental origin but are also sociocultural in their very nature (such as social roles). Gender is one of these factors. Most neurological, neurodevelopmental, neuropsychiatric, and psychosomatic disorders are characterized by impairments in visual social cognition (primarily body language reading and face perception) and a skewed sex ratio: females and males are affected differently in terms of clinical picture, prevalence, and severity. Is the social brain sex specific? This is still an open question. For a long time and for many reasons, sex differences have been overlooked or entirely ignored in neuroscience and biomedical research: there is a paucity of neuroimaging work examining sex differences in the social brain. However, the pattern of experimental behavioral data in both healthy, typically developing individuals and patients with deficient social cognition is beyond simple interpretation: contrary to popular wisdom, females are not always more proficient in understanding social signals, and their social abilities may be particularly affected by disease. Clarification of how neurobiological sex and sociocultural gender affect the social brain would provide novel insights into understanding gender‐specific vulnerability to neuropsychiatric disorders. This interaction is far beyond simplicity. Although sex differences represent a rather delicate topic, underestimation or exaggeration of possible effects retards progress in the field. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Neural correlates of social exclusion across ages: A coordinate-based meta-analysis of functional MRI studies

“…While some studies attempted to control for gender by recruiting an even number of males and females, among studies with an uneven gender distribution all but one failed to include this variable as a covariate in their analyses. This represents a valuable avenue for future investigation, particularly considering that sex differences have been identified in a range of social cognitive processes (Pavlova, 2016; Proverbio, 2017). Meta-analyses of the effect of individual differences related to social sensitivity are another important area for future investigation, given that a meta-analysis focusing on the ACC found that self-reported distress was associated with the location of peak BOLD response within this region (Rotge et al, 2015).…”

Social cognition in autism: Face tuning

“…Taken together, this suggests that in clinical settings, access to female ASD individuals is more difficult. The lack of studies in females with autism calls for a thorough investigation of their neurobiological profile 2 . Neuroanatomy of autism differs between females and males 59 .…”

Emotion Science in the Twenty-First Century. Time, Sex, and Behavior in Emotion Science: Over and Above

“…we are “standing up for the body” (de Gelder et al, 2010) and exploring body language reading in typical (Atkinson et al, 2004, 2012; Chouchourelou et al, 2006; Ikeda and Watanabe, 2009; Alaerts et al, 2011; Sokolov et al, 2011; Krüger et al, 2013; Actis-Grosso et al, 2015; de Gelder et al, 2015; for review, see Pavlova, 2017) and atypical development (e.g., Nackaerts et al, 2012; Strauss et al, 2015; Van den Stock et al, 2015; Vaskinn et al, 2016; Blain et al, 2017). …”

“…For example, females are widely believed to be more skilled in body language reading. Yet the pattern of experimental data in both typically developing healthy individuals and patients with deficient social abilities is “beyond simplicity” (Pavlova, 2017). Sex of observers affects body language reading in point-light movies depicting knocking at a door, but the effects are modulated by emotional content of actions.…”

“…Most of these disorders are characterized by impairments in visual social cognition, nonverbal communication, body language reading, and facial assessment of social counterparts (e.g., Pavlova, 2012, 2017; Lazar et al, 2014; Pelphrey et al, 2014; Strauss et al, 2015; Pavlova et al, 2017; Yang et al, 2017). And many of these disorders (for example, autism spectrum disorders, Hull et al, 2017) also display a skewed sex ratio: females and males are affected differently in terms of clinical picture, prevalence, and severity.…”