Androgyny eliminates sex differences in emotional reactivity: ERP and network coupling evidences

•Feminine women have Larger emotion-related LPP amplitudes than masculine men.•Feminine women have less fronto-parietal coupling than masculine men during negative stimulation.•Androgyny eliminates the above sex differences. The role of gender role in interpreting sex differences in emotion is unkno...

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Published inNeuroscience letters Vol. 720; p. 134776
Main Authors Yu, Kang, Liao, YuanYuan, Fu, DaoLing, Chen, ShengDong, Long, QuanShan, Xu, Peng, Yuan, JiaJin
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Ireland Elsevier B.V 16.02.2020
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ISSN0304-3940
1872-7972
1872-7972
DOI10.1016/j.neulet.2020.134776

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Summary:•Feminine women have Larger emotion-related LPP amplitudes than masculine men.•Feminine women have less fronto-parietal coupling than masculine men during negative stimulation.•Androgyny eliminates the above sex differences. The role of gender role in interpreting sex differences in emotion is unknown. The present study examined how gender role moderates sex differences in emotional reactivity. Event-related potentials (ERP) were recorded in sixty-eight subjects with typical or androgynous gender roles when they passively observed neutral and negative pictures. Behaviorally, typical females (feminine females) reported higher emotional rating than typical males (masculine males), while androgynous males and androgynous females reported no significant differences. Electrophysiologically, we found higher late positive potential (LPP) amplitude in typical females compared to typical males, while this pattern of sex difference was absent in androgynous subjects. The network analysis of EEG data indicates that typical males showed enhanced network coupling strengths between frontal/prefrontal and parietal areas than typical females, which was again absent in androgynous subjects. These findings suggest that gender role is an important determinant in the interpretation of sex differences in emotional reactivity.
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ISSN:0304-3940
1872-7972
1872-7972
DOI:10.1016/j.neulet.2020.134776