Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Brain Sciences (ELSC), The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel; Department of Neurology, Hadassah Hebrew University Medical Center, Jerusalem, Israel.
Department of Psychiatry, Hadassah Hebrew University Medical Center, Jerusalem, Israel; Department of Psychology, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel.
Psychoneuroendocrinology. 2019 Feb;100:85-95. doi: 10.1016/j.psyneuen.2018.09.032. Epub 2018 Oct 5.
Sex differences in the neural processing of emotion are of special interest considering that mood and anxiety disorders predominant in females. However, these sex-related differences were typically studied without considering the hormonal status of female subjects, although emotion processing in the brain was shown to differ between phases of the menstrual cycle. In this functional MRI study, we demonstrated the influence of the menstrual cycle phase on sex differences in brain activity and functional connectivity during negative and positive emotions, using two different paradigms: emotion perception and emotion experience. Twenty naturally cycling healthy women without premenstrual symptoms were scanned twice: during the mid-follicular and late-luteal menstrual phases, and compared to a matched group of twenty healthy men. During negative emotion perception, men showed increased neural activity in the right hippocampal formation relative to women in the mid-follicular phase, and increased activity in the right cerebellum relative to women in the late-luteal phase. During experience of amusement, reduced putamen-ventrolateral prefrontal cortex and putamen-dorsomedial prefrontal cortex functional connectivity were observed for women in the late-luteal phase relative to men and associated with levels of sex hormones. These neural and hormonal findings were complemented by behavioral reports of reduced amusement and increased sadness in late-luteal women. Our results demonstrate menstrual phase-dependent sex differences in emotion perception and experience and may suggest a biological tendency for a deficient experience of pleasure and reward during the late-luteal phase. These findings may further shed light on the underlying pathophysiology of premenstrual dysphoric disorder.
考虑到情绪和焦虑障碍在女性中更为常见，性别在情绪处理中的差异特别引人关注。然而，这些与性别相关的差异通常在不考虑女性受试者激素状态的情况下进行研究，尽管大脑中的情绪处理在月经周期的不同阶段存在差异。在这项功能磁共振成像研究中，我们使用两种不同的范式：情绪感知和情绪体验，证明了月经周期阶段对负面和正面情绪期间大脑活动和功能连接性别差异的影响。我们对 20 名没有经前症状的自然循环健康女性进行了两次扫描：在卵泡中期和黄体晚期，并与 20 名健康男性进行了比较。在负面情绪感知中，与卵泡中期的女性相比，男性在右侧海马体结构中表现出更高的神经活动，与黄体晚期的女性相比，在右侧小脑表现出更高的神经活动。在体验娱乐时，与男性相比，黄体晚期的女性表现出纹状体-腹外侧前额叶皮层和纹状体-背内侧前额叶皮层功能连接减少，与性激素水平相关。这些神经和激素发现与黄体晚期女性的娱乐减少和悲伤增加的行为报告相补充。我们的研究结果表明，情绪感知和体验存在月经周期依赖性的性别差异，这可能表明在黄体晚期女性体验愉悦和奖励的能力不足。这些发现可能进一步揭示经前烦躁障碍的潜在病理生理学。
