State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning & IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, 100875, China.
Key Laboratory of Beijing Key Laboratory of Brain Imaging and Connectomics, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, 100875, China.
Cereb Cortex. 2022 May 31;32(11):2478-2491. doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhab359.
Sex differences in human emotion and related decision-making behaviors are recognized, which can be traced back early in development. However, our understanding of their underlying neurodevelopmental mechanisms remains elusive. Using developmental functional magnetic resonance imaging and computational approach, we investigated developmental sex differences in latent decision-making dynamics during negative emotion processing and related neurocognitive pathways in 243 school-aged children and 78 young adults. Behaviorally, girls exhibit higher response caution and more effective evidence accumulation, whereas boys show more impulsive response to negative facial expression stimuli. These effects parallel sex differences in emotion-related brain maturity linking to evidence accumulation, along with age-related decrease in emotional response in the basolateral amygdala and medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) in girls and an increase in the centromedial amygdala (CMA) in boys. Moreover, girls exhibit age-related decreases in BLA-MPFC coupling linked to evidence accumulation, but boys exhibit increases in CMA-insula coupling associated with response caution. Our findings highlight the neurocomputational accounts for developmental sex differences in emotion and emotion-related behaviors and provide important implications into the neurodevelopmental mechanisms of sex differences in latent emotional decision-making dynamics. This informs the emergence of sex differences in typical and atypical neurodevelopment of children's emotion and related functions.
人类情感和相关决策行为存在性别差异，这可以追溯到早期发展阶段。然而，我们对其潜在的神经发育机制仍知之甚少。本研究使用发展功能磁共振成像和计算方法，在 243 名学龄儿童和 78 名年轻成年人中，研究了消极情绪处理过程中潜在决策动态以及相关神经认知途径的发育性别差异。行为上，女孩表现出更高的反应谨慎性和更有效的证据积累，而男孩对负性面部表情刺激表现出更冲动的反应。这些效应与情绪相关大脑成熟度的性别差异相平行，与女孩基底外侧杏仁核（BLA）和内侧前额叶皮层（MPFC）中与证据积累相关的情绪反应随年龄下降以及男孩中中央杏仁核（CMA）增加有关。此外，女孩表现出与证据积累相关的 BLA-MPFC 耦合的年龄相关下降，而男孩表现出与反应谨慎相关的 CMA-岛叶耦合的增加。我们的研究结果强调了情绪和情绪相关行为发育性别差异的神经计算解释，并为潜在情绪决策动态的性别差异的神经发育机制提供了重要启示。这为儿童情绪及其相关功能的典型和非典型神经发育中性别差异的出现提供了信息。
