Ramos-Loyo Julieta, Angulo-Chavira Armando, Llamas-Alonso Luis A, González-Garrido Andrés A
Instituto de Neurociencias, Universidad de Guadalajara, Mexico.
Neuropsychologia. 2016 Oct;91:290-298. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2016.08.023. Epub 2016 Aug 24.
The aim of the present study was to explore sex differences in the effects that emotional contexts exert on the temporal course of response inhibition using event-related potentials (ERP). Participants performed a Go-NoGo response inhibition task under 3 context conditions: with 1) neutral background stimuli, and 2) pleasant, and 3) unpleasant emotional contexts. No sex differences were found in relation to accuracy. Women showed higher N2NoGo amplitudes than men in both emotional contexts; whereas during inhibition men tended to show higher P3NoGo amplitudes than women in the unpleasant context. Both groups experienced a relevant effect of the presence of the unpleasant context during inhibition processing, as shown by the enhancement of the N2NoGo amplitudes in frontal regions compared to results from the neutral and pleasant conditions. In addition, women showed differences between the pleasant and unpleasant contexts, with the latter inducing higher amplitude values. Only in men did inhibition accuracy correlate with higher N2NoGo and lower P3NoGo amplitudes in the emotional context conditions. These findings suggest that when an inhibition task is performed in an emotionally-neutral background context no sex differences are observed in either accuracy or ERP components. However, when the emotional context was introduced -especially the unpleasant one- some gender differences did become evident. The higher N2NoGo amplitude at the presence of the unpleasant context may reflect an effect on attention and conflict monitoring. In addition, results suggest that during earlier processing stages, women invested more resources to process inhibition than men. Furthermore, men who invested more neural resources during earlier stages showed better response inhibition than those who did it during later processing stages, more closely-related to cognitive and motor inhibition processes.
本研究的目的是利用事件相关电位（ERP）探讨情绪背景对反应抑制时间进程影响中的性别差异。参与者在三种背景条件下执行了Go-NoGo反应抑制任务：1）中性背景刺激，2）愉快情绪背景，以及3）不愉快情绪背景。在准确性方面未发现性别差异。在两种情绪背景下，女性的N2NoGo波幅均高于男性；而在不愉快背景下抑制过程中，男性的P3NoGo波幅往往高于女性。与中性和愉快条件下的结果相比，额叶区域N2NoGo波幅增强，这表明两组在抑制过程中均受到不愉快背景存在的相关影响。此外，女性在愉快和不愉快背景之间存在差异，后者诱发出更高的波幅值。只有在男性中，情绪背景条件下的抑制准确性与更高的N2NoGo波幅和更低的P3NoGo波幅相关。这些发现表明，当在情绪中性的背景下执行抑制任务时，在准确性或ERP成分方面均未观察到性别差异。然而，当引入情绪背景——尤其是不愉快背景时——一些性别差异就变得明显了。不愉快背景下更高的N2NoGo波幅可能反映了对注意力和冲突监测的影响。此外，结果表明，在早期加工阶段，女性比男性投入更多资源来处理抑制。此外，在早期阶段投入更多神经资源的男性比在后期加工阶段投入更多资源的男性表现出更好的反应抑制，这与认知和运动抑制过程更为密切相关。
