Elsevier

Biological Psychiatry

Volume 55, Issue 11, 1 June 2004, Pages 1047-1055
Biological Psychiatry

Original article
A developmental examination of gender differences in brain engagement during evaluation of threat

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsych.2004.02.013Get rights and content

Abstract

Background

Females appear to be more sensitive and responsive to social cues, including threat signals, than are males. Recent theoretical models suggest that developmental changes in brain functioning play important roles in the emergence of such gender differences.

Methods

We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to examine developmental and gender differences in activation of neural structures thought to mediate attention to emotional faces depicting varying degrees of threat. Analyses focused on the orbitofrontal cortex, amygdala, and anterior cingulate cortex during the evaluation of threat conveyed by faces. Healthy adolescents (n = 17; 53% male) and adults (n = 17; 53% male) were scanned while they rated how threatening pictures of neutral and emotional (angry, fearful, or happy) faces appeared.

Results

Results indicate significant interactions among age, gender, and face type for activation during explicit threat monitoring. In particular, adult women activated orbitofrontal cortex and amygdala selectively to unambiguous threat (angry) cues, while adult men showed a less discriminating pattern of activation. No gender differences were evident for adolescents, who as a group resembled adult males.

Conclusions

These findings suggest that there are gender differences in patterns of neural responses to emotional faces that are not fully apparent until adulthood.

Section snippets

Participants

Seventeen healthy adults (8 women) aged 25 to 36 years and 17 healthy adolescents (8 girls) aged 9 to 17 years participated in the study. Adolescent boys and girls did not differ in age, t(15) = .45, p = .66 (see Table 1 for mean ages by group). Data from three additional adults and six additional adolescents were excluded from the analysis because of problems with subject task performance, excessive motion, or technical problems during the scan. All participants were healthy as determined by

Activation to unambiguous threat versus other facial expressions

We first examined three-way interactions among age group, gender, and pairs of emotion types (angry-neutral, angry-fearful, angry-happy). These analyses were designed to test our primary a priori hypotheses that gender differences in activation would exist and would be greater in adults than adolescents. Region of interest analyses corrected for multiple comparisons within each region revealed significant interactions between age group and gender for the angry versus neutral and angry versus

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Andrea Hoberman, Alison Merikangas, Lee Anne Montgomery, Suzanne Munson, Kenneth Towbin, Alan Zametkin, Jennifer Cameron, Jan Ebron, and Harvey Iwamoto for their assistance in completing this study.

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