Jie Tian PhD, PRESENTER: Nothing to Disclose

Abstract: HTML Purpose: Aim of this study was to identify gender differences of amygdala activities during externally and internally generated sad emotion using BOLD-fMRI. Methods and Materials: 17 healthy subjects (8 male and 9 female, mean age 27.8, SD 9.68) underwent 3T scanner (GE Medical Systems, Milwaukee, WI, USA). Images were collected every 3s using a gradient echo pulse sequence ( TR/TE = 4000 ms / 35 ms; FOV 192cm; 128x128 matrix). Subjects underwent BOLD-fMRI scans while taking two tasks. First subjects employed a standardized mood induction procedure while viewing emotion-generating and control images. Images included 20 sad faces in order to generated sad emotion and 20 neutral faces as control task .Both images were from a standard set of pictures of facial affect (Ekman and Friesen,1978). Second, subjects recall life events that generated sadness and during the recall control task, subjects were asked to feel emotionally neutral. The functional images were processed with SPM2b. Statistical methods were utilized for data analysis. Results: We used repeated-measures analysis ANOVA with factors affect (sad, neutral), gender (male, female) and stimuli (internal, external) to compare the extent and magnitude of activation in the amygdala. In images-induced emotion procedure, under the same subjective rate of evoked sad emotion, amygdala show significantly greater increases in activity compared to the neutral condition in male. But female did not demonstrate a similar significant activity . In recall-generated emotion, no significant differences were found between female and male. In comparison with the recall task, the external stimuli were generated greater activity in amygdala. Conclusion: The results identified some differences of amygdala activity during affect processing between male and female. The results demonstrate that in order to experience the same affect state as female, male need pay more attention to external stimuli, which consequently showed more amygdala activity. Female may need less external stimuli to target feeling than male .This may explain why clinical depression is higher in women. The result disclosed neurobiological substrates of affect processing preliminarily and may help to understand the clinical psychiatric disorder.       Questions about this event email: forestxmcx@hotmail.com

Tian PhD, J, Gender Differences of Amygada Activity during External and Internal Stimuli.  Radiological Society of North America 2003 Scientific Assembly and Annual Meeting, November 30 - December 5, 2003 ,Chicago IL. http://archive.rsna.org/2003/3105830.html