Gender differences in electrophysiological responses to facial stimuli

BACKGROUND A facial discrimination task was adapted to be used in an event-related potential (ERP) paradigm in order to evaluate whether young women's brain responses to affective stimuli differed from those of young men. METHODS The stimuli used to generate a late positive component of the ERP, designated the "P450," were male and female faces with neutral, sad, or happy facial expressions. Subjects were instructed to respond to the happy and sad faces but not to the neutral faces. The amplitude and latency of the P450 component was evaluated with respect to the gender of the subject, as well as the gender and emotional affect of the facial stimuli themselves. RESULTS In all subjects, the sad faces elicited longer latency and higher amplitude P450 components as compared to the happy faces. Female subjects were found to generate significantly longer latency and higher amplitude P450 components than male subjects to both happy and sad faces. All subjects were found to respond more quickly to: male happy faces > female happy faces > female sad faces > male sad faces. CONCLUSIONS These data suggest that the morphology of the late positive component of the ERP differs depending on the emotional expression of the stimuli, the gender of the facial stimulus, and the gender of the subject.

[1]  M. Schuckit,et al.  Plasma cortisol levels following ethanol in sons of alcoholics and controls. , 1987, Archives of general psychiatry.

[2]  W. B. Matthews.  Motivation, motor and sensory processes of the brain: electrical potentials, behaviour and clinical use. Proceedings of the 5th International Symposium Ulm-Reisensburg. May 14-18, 1979. , 1982, Progress in brain research.

[3]  John Polich,et al.  P300 in Clinical Applications: Meaning, Method, and Measurement , 1991 .

[4]  M. Bader,et al.  Topography of event-related potentials elicited by visual emotional stimuli. , 1991, International journal of psychophysiology : official journal of the International Organization of Psychophysiology.

[5]  S. Morzorati,et al.  Heritable features of the auditory oddball event-related potential: peaks, latencies, morphology and topography. , 1994, Electroencephalography and clinical neurophysiology.

[6]  J. Rohrbaugh,et al.  Current trends in event-related potential research , 1987 .

[7]  J. T. Marsh,et al.  Judgments of emotion in words and faces: ERP correlates. , 1987, International journal of psychophysiology : official journal of the International Organization of Psychophysiology.

[8]  A Pfefferbaum,et al.  Effects of stimulus intensity on P300. , 1980, Progress in brain research.

[9]  C. Nelson,et al.  Event-related potentials to emotional and neutral stimuli. , 1990, Journal of clinical and experimental neuropsychology.

[10]  C. Ehlers,et al.  Electrophysiological findings during the menstrual cycle in women with and without late luteal phase dysphoric disorder: relationship to risk for alcoholism? , 1996, Biological Psychiatry.

[11]  Ernst Fernando Lopes Da Silva Niedermeyer,et al.  Electroencephalography, basic principles, clinical applications, and related fields , 1982 .

[12]  C. Nelson,et al.  Recognition memory and resource allocation as revealed by children's event-related potential responses to happy and angry faces. , 1990 .

[13]  Ruben C. Gur,et al.  Differential effects of mood on cortical cerebral blood flow: A 133xenon clearance study , 1994, Psychiatry Research.

[14]  M. Mandal,et al.  Right Brain Damage Impairs Recognition of Negative Emotions , 1991, Cortex.

[15]  J. Polich,et al.  Normal variation of P300 from auditory stimuli. , 1986, Electroencephalography and clinical neurophysiology.

[16]  M. Rugg,et al.  Event-related potentials and the semantic matching of faces , 1989, Neuropsychologia.

[17]  J. Polich.  On the correlation between P300 amplitude and latency , 1992 .

[18]  J. Polich,et al.  P300, cognitive capability, and personality: A correlational study of university undergraduates , 1992 .

[19]  Miller Ga,et al.  Affective valence and information processing. , 1987 .

[20]  H. Kraemer,et al.  Facial emotion discrimination: II. Behavioral findings in depression , 1992, Psychiatry Research.

[21]  V. Johnston,et al.  Multiple P3s to emotional stimuli and their theoretical significance. , 1986, Psychophysiology.

[22]  R. Kestenbaum,et al.  Neural and behavioral correlates of emotion recognition in children and adults. , 1992, Journal of experimental child psychology.

[23]  J. Polich,et al.  P300 and the menstrual cycle. , 1988, Electroencephalography and clinical neurophysiology.

[24]  J. Polich,et al.  Frequency, Intensity, and Duration as Determinants of P300 from Auditory Stimuli , 1989, Journal of clinical neurophysiology : official publication of the American Electroencephalographic Society.

[25]  Ruben C. Gur,et al.  Facial emotion discrimination: I. Task construction and behavioral findings in normal subjects , 1992, Psychiatry Research.

[26]  N. Fox,et al.  Electroencephalogram asymmetry during emotionally evocative films and its relation to positive and negative affectivity , 1992, Brain and Cognition.

[27]  A. Papanicolaou,et al.  Relationship between stimulus intensity and the P300. , 1985, Psychophysiology.

[28]  R. Gur,et al.  Facial emotion discrimination: III. Behavioral findings in schizophrenia , 1992, Psychiatry Research.

[29]  R. E. Wheeler,et al.  Frontal brain asymmetry and emotional reactivity: a biological substrate of affective style. , 2007, Psychophysiology.

[30]  Werner Wittling,et al.  Topographic brain mapping of emotion-related hemisphere asymmetries. , 1992 .

[31]  V S Johnston,et al.  The relationship between menstrual phase and the P3 component of ERPs. , 1991, Psychophysiology.

[32]  W. Sommer,et al.  Human brain potential correlates of face encoding into memory. , 1991, Electroencephalography and clinical neurophysiology.