Posted by Annapaola Prestia Laboratory of Epidemiology Neuroimaging and Telemedicine, IRCCS Centro San Giovanni di Dio FBF, The National Centre for Research and Care of Alzheimer’s and Mental Diseases, Brescia, Italy (June 21st 2010)

Most studies have examined female and male subjects without analyzing the influence of gender, despite its demonstrated importance in affecting neural systems involved in emotion processing. The aim of this study was to explore the impact of gender on amygdala activation during an emotion recognition task. The explicit emotion recognition task consisted of emotional expressions (anger, disgust, fear, happy, and sad) and neutral faces. Participants were asked to choose the correct emotion from two possibilities presented on the left and right of the image as accurately and as quickly as possible, by pressing the corresponding button of a response box using the right hand. Bilateral amygdala activation was obtained to all emotional expressions and neutral faces across all subjects. However, only in males a significant correlation of amygdala activation and behavioural response to fearful stimuli was observed, indicating higher amygdala responses with better fear recognition, thus pointing to subtle gender differences. This indicates that the specific association between an intact amygdala reaction and the processing of fearful faces may not only be task dependent but also subject to gender influences.