Sex differences in the neurobiology of fear conditioning and extinction: a preliminary fMRI study of shared sex differences with stress-arousal circuitry
| Autor: | Jill M. Goldstein, Clas Linnman, Brandon Abbs, Daphne J. Holt, Ansgar Rougemount-Bücking, Mohammed R. Milad, Kelimer Lebron-Milad, Mohammed A Zeidan |
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| Rok vydání: | 2012 |
| Předmět: |
Brain activity and meditation
Poison control Fear conditioning Amygdala 03 medical and health sciences 0302 clinical medicine Sex differences medicine Prefrontal cortex Biological Psychiatry Anterior cingulate cortex 030304 developmental biology 0303 health sciences medicine.diagnostic_test Research fMRI Extinction (psychology) Psychiatry and Mental health Fear extinction Stress response circuitry medicine.anatomical_structure Psychology Functional magnetic resonance imaging Neuroscience 030217 neurology & neurosurgery |
| Zdroj: | Biology of Mood and Anxiety Disorders, vol. 2, no. 1, pp. 7 Biology of Mood & Anxiety Disorders |
| ISSN: | 2045-5380 |
| DOI: | 10.1186/2045-5380-2-7 |
| Popis: | BACKGROUND: The amygdala, hippocampus, medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and brain-stem subregions are implicated in fear conditioning and extinction, and are brain regions known to be sexually dimorphic. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate sex differences in brain activity in these regions during fear conditioning and extinction. METHODS: Subjects were 12 healthy men comparable to 12 healthy women who underwent a 2-day experiment in a 3 T MR scanner. Fear conditioning and extinction learning occurred on day 1 and extinction recall occurred on day 2. The conditioned stimuli were visual cues and the unconditioned stimulus was a mild electric shock. Skin conductance responses (SCR) were recorded throughout the experiment as an index of the conditioned response. fMRI data (blood-oxygen-level-dependent [BOLD] signal changes) were analyzed using SPM8. RESULTS: Findings showed no significant sex differences in SCR during any experimental phases. However, during fear conditioning, there were significantly greater BOLD-signal changes in the right amygdala, right rostral anterior cingulate (rACC) and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) in women compared with men. In contrast, men showed significantly greater signal changes in bilateral rACC during extinction recall. CONCLUSIONS: These results indicate sex differences in brain activation within the fear circuitry of healthy subjects despite similar peripheral autonomic responses. Furthermore, we found that regions where sex differences were previously reported in response to stress, also exhibited sex differences during fear conditioning and extinction. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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