Sex differences in interhemispheric communication during face identity encoding: Evidence from ERPs

Sex differences of hemispheric lateralization for faces and Chinese characters in early perceptual processing

“…Importantly, the N170 amplitude elicited by faces was larger in the right hemisphere than in the left hemisphere in males, and was similar in both hemispheres in females. These results are also consistent with the previous studies [13][14][15][17][18][19]. Together, our results and previous studies suggest that the N170 response in face processing is right hemisphere dominant in males and bilateral in females, and is stable across different tasks and cultures.…”

“…We chose long-term objects of expertise (face and word) as stimuli, and line drawing, a familiar object of non-expertise, as control stimulus. Given the existing evidence of sex differences for face [13][14][15][17][18][19] and word processing [20,21], but see [22], we expected to replicate these sex differences for hemispheric lateralization of faces and address sex differences for Chinese characters. As noted above the links between faces and words, we also expected to find that the degree of hemispheric lateralization of Chinese characters would be significantly related to the degree of hemispheric lateralization of faces.…”

Early processing (N170) of infant faces in mothers of children with autism spectrum disorder and its association with maternal sensitivity

“…Several studies report that N170 lateralization to the right is the typical neural response when processing adult faces [Dawson et al, ; Luck, ; McPartland et al, ; Nguyen & Cunnington, ; Pegna, Khateb, Michel, & Landis, ; Rossion, Joyce, Cottrell, & Tarr, ] and infant faces [Brosch, Sander, & Scherer, ]. Nevertheless, some studies have not found this lateralization effect for infant faces in healthy controls, specifically mothers [Noll et al, ; Proverbio et al, ], or for adult faces in healthy females compared to males [Ji, Cao, & Xu, ; Godard, Leleu, Rebai, & Fiori, ; Proverbio, Riva, Martin, & Zani, ; Godard, ]. Thus, it remains an open question whether the typical response of women, and particularly mothers, is rather a lack of lateralization when presented with infant faces.…”

Sex Differences in Categorical Adaptation for Faces and Chinese Characters during Early Perceptual Processing

“…We chose objects of long-term expertise (faces and Chinese characters) as the stimuli. Given the existing ERP evidence for sex differences in face (Proverbio et al, 2006 , 2010 , 2011 , 2012 ; Godard and Fiori, 2010 ; Godard et al, 2013 ) and word processing (Skrandies et al, 1999 ; Hill et al, 2006 ), we predicted sex differences in N170 categorical adaptation for both face and Chinese character processing. In addition, since many previous studies have demonstrated relationships between face and word stimuli (Nestor et al, 2013 ; Dehaene et al, 2015 ), we predicted that the degree of N170 categorical adaptation for faces would be similar to the degree of N170 categorical adaptation for Chinese characters.…”

“…Sex differences in the neural response to objects of expertise have been investigated during early perception (Proverbio et al, 2006 , 2010 , 2012 ; Sun et al, 2010 ). For example, during early perceptual processing, research has consistently demonstrated a right-lateralized face-related N170 response in men, and a bilateral response in women (Proverbio et al, 2006 , 2010 , 2011 , 2012 ; Godard and Fiori, 2010 ; Godard et al, 2013 ; Ji et al, 2016 ). Only a few studies have used ERPs to investigate sex differences in word processing, although they have found evidence for differences between women and men (Skrandies et al, 1999 ; Hill et al, 2006 ; Ji et al, 2016 ; however, Wirth et al, 2007 ).…”