Du Yin, Wang Yinan, Yu Mengxia, Tian Xue, Liu Jia
Faculty of Psychology, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China.
Department of Psychology, Tsinghua Laboratory of Brain and Intelligence, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.
Front Hum Neurosci. 2021 Jan 11;14:593787. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2020.593787. eCollection 2020.
Gender roles are anti-dichotomous and malleable social constructs that should theoretically be constructed independently from biological sex. However, it is unclear whether and how the factor of sex is related to neural mechanisms involved in social constructions of gender roles. Thus, the present study aimed to investigate sex specificity in gender role constructions and the corresponding underlying neural mechanisms. We measured gender role orientation using the Bem Sex-Role Inventory, used a voxel-based global brain connectivity method based on resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging to characterize the within-network connectivity in the brain reward network, and analyzed how the integration of the reward network is related to gender role scores between sex groups. An omnibus analysis of voxel-wise global brain connectivity values within a two-level linear mixed model revealed that in female participants, femininity scores were positively associated with integration in the posterior orbitofrontal cortex and subcallosal cortex, whereas masculinity scores were positively associated with integration in the frontal pole. By contrast, in male participants, masculinity was negatively correlated with integration in the nucleus accumbens and subcallosal cortex. For the first time, the present study revealed the sex-specific neural mechanisms underlying distinct gender roles, which elucidates the process of gender construction from the perspective of the interaction between reward sensitivity and social reinforcement.
性别角色是反二元对立且具有可塑性的社会建构，理论上应独立于生物性别构建。然而，性别因素是否以及如何与参与性别角色社会建构的神经机制相关尚不清楚。因此，本研究旨在探究性别角色建构中的性别特异性以及相应的潜在神经机制。我们使用贝姆性别角色量表测量性别角色取向，基于静息态功能磁共振成像采用基于体素的全脑连接性方法来表征大脑奖赏网络内的网络内连接性，并分析奖赏网络的整合如何与不同性别组之间的性别角色得分相关。在两级线性混合模型内对体素水平的全脑连接性值进行的综合分析显示，在女性参与者中，女性气质得分与眶额皮质后部和胼胝体下皮质的整合呈正相关，而男性气质得分与额极的整合呈正相关。相比之下，在男性参与者中，男性气质与伏隔核和胼胝体下皮质的整合呈负相关。本研究首次揭示了不同性别角色背后的性别特异性神经机制，从奖赏敏感性与社会强化相互作用的角度阐明了性别建构的过程。
