Cheng Y, Chou K-H, Decety J, Chen I-Y, Hung D, Tzeng O J-L, Lin C-P
Institute of Neuroscience, National Yang-Ming University, 155 Li-Nong Street, Sec. 2, Peitou, Taipei, Taiwan.
Neuroscience. 2009 Jan 23;158(2):713-20. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroscience.2008.10.026. Epub 2008 Nov 1.
Females frequently perform better in empathy, interpersonal sensitivity, and emotional recognition than do males. The mirror-neuron system has been proposed to play an important role in social cognition. It remains to be clarified, however, whether the neuroanatomy underlying the human mirror neuron system exhibits sex differences. With the use of voxel-based morphometry analysis, a whole-brain unbiased technique to characterize regional cerebral volume differences in structural magnetic resonance images, concurrent with the dispositional empathy measures, we demonstrate that young adult females (n=25) had significantly larger gray matter volume in the pars opercularis and inferior parietal lobule than matched males (n=25) participants. Moreover, higher self-report scores in the emotional empathic disposition was tightly coupled with larger gray matter volume of the pars opercularis across all female and male participants (P=0.002). These results indicate that the existence of neuroanatomical sex differences in the human mirror-neuron system. They also suggest that the network of the human mirror-neuron system is strongly linked to empathy competence.
女性在同理心、人际敏感性和情绪识别方面的表现通常优于男性。镜像神经元系统被认为在社会认知中起重要作用。然而，人类镜像神经元系统的神经解剖结构是否存在性别差异仍有待阐明。通过使用基于体素的形态计量学分析，一种用于在结构磁共振图像中表征区域脑容量差异的全脑无偏技术，并结合特质同理心测量，我们证明，年轻成年女性（n = 25）在额下回岛盖部和顶下小叶的灰质体积显著大于匹配的男性参与者（n = 25）。此外，在所有女性和男性参与者中，情绪共情特质的自我报告得分越高，与额下回岛盖部灰质体积越大紧密相关（P = 0.002）。这些结果表明人类镜像神经元系统存在神经解剖学上的性别差异。它们还表明，人类镜像神经元系统网络与共情能力密切相关。
