Sex-related differences in event-related potentials, face recognition, and facial affect processing in prepubertal children.

Thirty-five prepubertal children, 17 boys and 18 girls, between the ages of 8 and 11 years, were studied to examine electrophysiological and cognitive sex differences during a face-recognition-memory (FRM) task and a facial-affect-identification task (FAIT). All participants were prepubertal, as determined by J. M. Tanner's (1962) staging and endocrine evaluation. Sex-dependent event-related potential (ERP) amplitude asymmetries were found during FRM. Boys displayed greater right versus left ERP amplitude to auditory tone probes during the task, whereas girls displayed the opposite pattern. In addition, positive correlations were obtained between ERP amplitude during FRM and FAIT accuracy scores for boys, but not for girls. Results suggest that girls and boys may use different neuronal systems in the processing of faces and facial affect. Findings are consistent with developmental theories regarding sex differences in visuospatial processing.

[1]  Auditory Evoked Potentials and Hand Preference in 6-Month-Old Infants: Possible Gender-Related Differences in Cerebral Organization. , 1990 .

[2]  J. Borod,et al.  Perception of Facial Emotion in Schizophrenic and Right Brain-Damaged Patients , 1993, The Journal of nervous and mental disease.

[3]  F. Michèl,et al.  [Are the lesions responsible for prosopagnosia always bilateral?]. , 1989, Revue neurologique.

[4]  J. Campos,et al.  Auditory evoked potentials and sex-related differences in brain development , 1981, Brain and Language.

[5]  G. Mangun,et al.  Neural Mechanisms of Global and Local Processing: A Combined PET and ERP Study , 1998, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

[6]  Prosopagnosia. Report of four cases. , 1982, European neurology.

[7]  J. Shucard,et al.  Auditory evoked potentials as probes of hemispheric differences in cognitive processing. , 1977, Science.

[8]  Sönke Johannes,et al.  Brain potentials reveal the timing of face identity and expression judgments , 1998, Neuroscience Research.

[9]  D W Harrison,et al.  Functional asymmetry for facial affect perception in high and low hostile men and women. , 1990, The International journal of neuroscience.

[10]  P. Ekman.  Pictures of Facial Affect , 1976 .

[11]  C R Hamilton,et al.  Effects of facial identity, facial expression, and subject's sex on laterality in monkeys. , 1998, Laterality.

[12]  R. Bauer,et al.  Autonomic recognition of names and faces in prosopagnosia: A neuropsychological application of the guilty knowledge test , 1984, Neuropsychologia.

[13]  D. Harrison,et al.  Sex differences and cerebral asymmetry in facial affect perception as a function of depressed mood , 1994, Psychobiology.

[14]  H. Nordby,et al.  Event-related potential (ERP) asymmetries to emotional stimuli in a visual half-field paradigm. , 1997, Psychophysiology.

[15]  M. Bradley,et al.  Probing affective pictures: attended startle and tone probes. , 1998, Psychophysiology.

[16]  R. Adolphs,et al.  Cortical Systems for the Recognition of Emotion in Facial Expressions , 1996, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[17]  Craig E. Tenke,et al.  Identification of Emotion in a Dichotic Listening Task: Event-Related Brain Potential and Behavioral Findings , 1998, Brain and Cognition.

[18]  A. Mazzucchi,et al.  Is Prosopagnosia More Frequent in Males Than in Females? , 1983, Cortex.

[19]  T. Allison,et al.  Electrophysiological Studies of Face Perception in Humans , 1996, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

[20]  B. Gulyás,et al.  Functional Organization of the Human Visual Cortex , 1993 .

[21]  Cheryl L. Grady,et al.  Dissociation of object and spatial visual processing pathways in , 1993 .

[22]  David Wechsler,et al.  Manual for the Wechsler intelligence scale for children , 1974 .

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

[24]  D. Kimura.  Sex differences in the brain. , 1992, Scientific American.

[25]  Charles A. Nelson,et al.  Hemispheric differences in brain activity related to the recognition of emotional expressions by 5‐year‐old children , 1998 .

[26]  M Don,et al.  Spatio-temporal source modeling of evoked potentials to acoustic and cochlear implant stimulation. , 1993, Electroencephalography and clinical neurophysiology.

[27]  M. Bradley,et al.  Probe P3 and blinks: two measures of affective startle modulation. , 1997, Psychophysiology.

[28]  Steven A. Hillyard,et al.  Mechanisms and models of se-lective attention , 1995 .

[29]  D. Everhart,et al.  Facial affect perception in anxious and nonanxious men without depression , 2000, Psychobiology.

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

[31]  C. Nelson,et al.  Neural correlates of infants' visual responsiveness to facial expressions of emotion. , 1996, Developmental psychobiology.

[32]  T. Allison,et al.  Electrophysiological studies of human face perception. II: Response properties of face-specific potentials generated in occipitotemporal cortex. , 1999, Cerebral cortex.

[33]  C. Marescaux,et al.  [Late diagnosis of congenital argininemia during administration of sodium valproate]. , 1990, Revue neurologique.

[34]  James M. Tanner,et al.  Growth at Adolescence , 1956 .

[35]  A. Young,et al.  Aspects of face processing , 1986 .

[36]  J. Shucard,et al.  Electrophysiological and neuropsychological indices of cognitive processing deficits in turner syndrome , 1992 .

[37]  R. Näätänen.  The role of attention in auditory information processing as revealed by event-related potentials and other brain measures of cognitive function , 1990, Behavioral and Brain Sciences.

[38]  S. Bryson,et al.  Hemispheric Asymmetries in the Perception of Emotional and Neutral Faces , 1987, Cortex.

[39]  L. Obler,et al.  Right hemisphere emotional perception: evidence across multiple channels. , 1998, Neuropsychology.

[40]  K. Heilman,et al.  The nonverbal affect lexicon: Theoretical perspectives from neuropsychological studies of affect perception. , 1993 .

[41]  Klaus Willmes,et al.  Hemispheric Asymmetry in the Recognition of Emotional Attitude Conveyed by Facial Expression, Prosody and Propositional Speech , 1997, Cortex.

[42]  A. Benton,et al.  Journal of Clinical Neuropsychology , 1981 .

[43]  J. Johnstone,et al.  Probe evoked potentials: theory, method and applications. , 1984, The International journal of neuroscience.

[44]  R. Näätänen.  Attention and brain function , 1992 .

[45]  G. V. Van Hoesen,et al.  Prosopagnosia , 1982, Neurology.

[46]  K. Heilman,et al.  Dissociation between the processing of affective and nonaffective faces: a case study. , 1984, Journal of clinical neuropsychology.

[47]  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.

[48]  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.

[49]  A. Benton,et al.  Visuoperceptual, visuospatial, and visuoconstructive disorders. , 1993 .

[50]  Theodor Landis,et al.  Are Unilateral Right Posterior Cerebral Lesions Sufficient to Cause Prosopagnosia? Clinical and Radiological Findings in Six Additional Patients , 1986, Cortex.

[51]  J. A. Hanson,et al.  Facial affect recognition in children , 1988, Neurology.

[52]  A. Damasio,et al.  Face agnosia and the neural substrates of memory. , 1990, Annual review of neuroscience.

[53]  M. G. McGee.  Human spatial abilities: psychometric studies and environmental, genetic, hormonal, and neurological influences. , 1979, Psychological bulletin.

[54]  E. Renzi.  Current Issues on Prosopagnosia , 1986 .

[55]  T. Allison,et al.  Face-Specific Processing in the Human Fusiform Gyrus , 1997, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

[56]  H. Jasper.  Report of the committee on methods of clinical examination in electroencephalography , 1958 .

[57]  A. Damasio,et al.  Intact recognition of facial expression, gender, and age in patients with impaired recognition of face identity , 1988, Neurology.

[58]  Walter F. McKeever,et al.  Right-hemisphere superiority for discriminating memorized from nonmemorized faces: Affective imagery, sex, and perceived emotionality effects , 1981, Brain and Language.

[59]  D. Harrison,et al.  Sex differences in the functional asymmetry for facial affect perception. , 1991, The International journal of neuroscience.

[60]  T. Allison,et al.  Differential Sensitivity of Human Visual Cortex to Faces, Letterstrings, and Textures: A Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study , 1996, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[61]  J. Shucard,et al.  Evoked potentials to auditory probes as indices of cerebral specialization of function--replication and extension. , 1981, Electroencephalography and clinical neurophysiology.

[62]  S. Rapcsak,et al.  Anomia for Facial Expressions: Neuropsychological Mechanisms and Anatomical Correlates , 1993, Brain and Language.

[63]  E. Koff,et al.  Effects of lesion variables and emotion type on the perception of facial emotion. , 1999, The Journal of nervous and mental disease.

[64]  M. Rugg,et al.  Electrophysiology of Mind: Event-Related Brain Potentials and Cognition , 1995 .

[65]  T. Allison,et al.  Electrophysiological studies of human face perception. III: Effects of top-down processing on face-specific potentials. , 1999, Cerebral cortex.

[66]  E. Maccoby,et al.  The Psychology of Sex Differences , 1974 .

[67]  Stephanie Clarke,et al.  Face recognition and postero-inferior hemispheric lesions , 1997, Neuropsychologia.

[68]  K. Heilman,et al.  The role of the right hemisphere in emotional communication. , 1991, Brain : a journal of neurology.

[69]  T. Allison,et al.  Electrophysiological studies of human face perception. I: Potentials generated in occipitotemporal cortex by face and non-face stimuli. , 1999, Cerebral cortex.

[70]  J. Sergent,et al.  Functional neuroanatomy of face and object processing. A positron emission tomography study. , 1992, Brain : a journal of neurology.