Doucet Gaelle E, Kruse Jordanna A, Keefe Ahrianna, Rice Danielle L, Coutant Anna T, Pulliam Haley, Smith OgheneTejiri V, Calhoun Vince D, Stephen Julia M, Wang Yu-Ping, White Stuart F, Picci Giorgia, Taylor Brittany K, Wilson Tony W
Institute for Human Neuroscience, Boys Town National Research Hospital, Boys Town, NE 68010, USA.
Center for Pediatric Brain Health, Boys Town National Research Hospital, Boys Town, NE 68010, USA.
Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci. 2024 Dec 10;19(1). doi: 10.1093/scan/nsae085.
Facial expressions convey important social information and can initiate behavioral change through the processing and understanding of emotions. However, while this ability is known to evolve throughout development, it remains unclear whether this ability differs between girls and boys or how other variables such as level of anxiety can modulate it. Furthermore, understanding the underlying neural mechanisms of facial expression processing and how they are linked by sex and anxiety during development is essential, as alterations in this processing have been associated with psychiatric disorders. Herein, 191 typically developing youth (6- to 15-years old) completed an implicit face processing task involving three facial expressions (angry, happy, and neutral) during functional magnetic resonance imaging. We conducted linear models on the fMRI data to investigate the impact sex and anxiety on brain responses to emotional faces, accounting for age. Our findings indicated a significant anxiety-by-sex interaction in a posterior network covering bilateral visual and medial temporal cortices during the happy > neutral contrast. Specifically, girls with higher anxiety showed weaker activation while boys showed the opposite pattern. These findings suggest that the inter-subject variability reported in typically developing individuals in response to facial emotions may be related to many factors, including sex and anxiety level.
面部表情传达重要的社会信息，并能通过情绪的处理和理解引发行为改变。然而，虽然这种能力在整个发育过程中会不断演变，但尚不清楚这种能力在女孩和男孩之间是否存在差异，或者诸如焦虑水平等其他变量如何对其产生调节作用。此外，了解面部表情处理的潜在神经机制，以及它们在发育过程中如何因性别和焦虑而相互关联至关重要，因为这种处理过程的改变与精神疾病有关。在此，191名发育正常的青少年（6至15岁）在功能磁共振成像期间完成了一项涉及三种面部表情（愤怒、快乐和中性）的隐式面部处理任务。我们对功能磁共振成像数据进行了线性模型分析，以研究性别和焦虑对大脑对情绪化面孔反应的影响，并考虑了年龄因素。我们的研究结果表明，在快乐>中性对比期间，双侧视觉和内侧颞叶皮质的后网络中存在显著的焦虑与性别的交互作用。具体而言，焦虑程度较高的女孩激活较弱，而男孩则呈现相反的模式。这些发现表明，发育正常的个体对面部情绪反应中报告的个体间变异性可能与许多因素有关，包括性别和焦虑水平。
