Gender Differences in Healthy Volunteers Stimulated by Emotional Pictures Through Functional MRI / 中国医学影像学杂志

ABSTRACT

Purpose The study aimed to explore gender differences of brain activation in healthy volunteers under the stimulation of emotional pictures.Materials and Methods The cerebral functional imaging data of twenty healthy volunteers at Henan Medical College from Nov.2014 to Dec.2014 were prospectively studied (12 males and 8 females).Emotional pictures (30 positive,30 negative and 30 neutral pictures) from Chinese Affective Picture System (CAPS) were used randomly as visual stimuli for both males and females.Functional MRI was performed while each subject was stimulated by emotional pictures.The fMRI data were processed and the statistical analysis was performed to obtain the activated brain regions of males and females and to compare the gender differences.Results Under the stimuli of negative emotional pictures,bilateral temporal lobe,bilateral cuneus in men and bilateral cuneus in women were activated under the stimuli of positive emotional pictures (P＜0.05).Compared with men,increased activation of left amygdala,bilateral prefrontal gyrus,bilateral precuneus and right insula were observed in women under the stimuli of negative pictures.The differences were statistically significant (P＜0.05).Compared with women,no cerebral region was more activated in men under the stimuli of negative pictures.Under the stimuli of positive emotional pictures,the left prefrontal gyrus in women was more activated than that in men whilst the left temporal lobe in men was more activated than that in women.The differences were statistically significant (P＜0.05).Conclusion Gender differences of activated cerebral regions under stimuli of emotional pictures do exist in healthy volunteers.In particular,more cerebral regions and increased activation were observed in women compare to men,which demonstrates that women response stronger to negative emotion.