School of Psychology, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.
J Abnorm Psychol. 2010 Feb;119(1):241-7. doi: 10.1037/a0017551.
Although women have a greater propensity than men to develop posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) following trauma, sex differences in neural activations to threat have received little investigation. This study tested the prediction that trauma would heighten activity in automatic fear-processing networks to a greater extent in women than in men. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data were recorded in 23 participants with PTSD (13 women, 10 men), 21 trauma-exposed controls (9 women, 12 men), and 42 non-trauma-exposed controls (22 women, 20 men) while they viewed masked facial expressions of fear. Exposure to trauma was associated with enhanced brainstem activity to fear in women, regardless of the presence of PTSD, but in men, it was associated only with the development of PTSD. Men with PTSD displayed greater hippocampal activity to fear than did women. Both men and women with PTSD showed enhanced amygdala activity to fear relative to controls. The authors conclude that greater brainstem activation to threat stimuli may contribute to the greater prevalence of PTSD in women, and greater hippocampal activation in men may subserve an enhanced capacity for contextualizing fear-related stimuli.
尽管女性在创伤后比男性更容易患上创伤后应激障碍（PTSD），但针对威胁的神经激活中的性别差异却很少受到关注。本研究检验了这样一种预测，即创伤会在更大程度上增强女性而非男性的自动恐惧处理网络的活动。在这项研究中，23 名 PTSD 患者（13 名女性，10 名男性）、21 名创伤暴露对照组（9 名女性，12 名男性）和 42 名非创伤暴露对照组（22 名女性，20 名男性）在观看掩蔽的恐惧面部表情时记录了功能性磁共振成像（fMRI）数据。无论是否患有 PTSD，女性暴露于创伤后，与恐惧相关的脑干活动都会增强，但男性只有在患有 PTSD 时才会出现这种情况。与女性相比，患有 PTSD 的男性对恐惧的海马体活动更大。与对照组相比，患有 PTSD 的男性和女性对恐惧的杏仁核活动增强。作者得出结论，对威胁性刺激的更大脑干激活可能导致女性 PTSD 的更高患病率，而男性的更大海马体激活可能有助于对与恐惧相关的刺激进行更好的情境化处理。
