Skip Navigation



Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Advance Access published online on May 24, 2007
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, doi:10.1093/scan/nsm018
This Article
Right arrow Full Text Freely available
Right arrow FREE Full Text (PDF) Freely available
Right arrow Supplementary Data
Right arrow All Versions of this Article:
2/3/227    most recent
nsm018v1
Right arrow E-letters: Submit a response
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me when E-letters are posted
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrow Request Permissions
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Wang, J.
Right arrow Articles by Detre, J. A.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
PubMed
Right arrow Articles by Wang, J.
Right arrow Articles by Detre, J. A.
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

© The Author (2007). Published by Oxford University Press. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Gender difference in neural response to psychological stress

Jiongjiong Wang1,2,4, Marc Korczykowski2,4, Hengyi Rao2,4, Yong Fan1, John Pluta2,4, Ruben C. Gur1,2,3, Bruce S. McEwen5 and John A. Detre1,2,4

1Department of Radiology2Department of Neurology and3Department of Psychiatry4Center for Functional Neuroimaging, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA5Harold and Margaret Milliken Hatch Laboratory of Neuroendocrinology, The Rockefeller University, New York, NY, USA

Gender is an important biological determinant of vulnerability to psychosocial stress. We used perfusion based functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure cerebral blood flow (CBF) responses to mild to moderate stress in 32 healthy people (16 males and 16 females). Psychological stress was elicited using mental arithmetic tasks under varying pressure. Stress in men was associated with CBF increase in the right prefrontal cortex (RPFC) and CBF reduction in the left orbitofrontal cortex (LOrF), a robust response that persisted beyond the stress task period. In contrast, stress in women primarily activated the limbic system, including the ventral striatum, putamen, insula and cingulate cortex. The asymmetric prefrontal activity in males was associated with a physiological index of stress responses—salivary cortisol, whereas the female limbic activation showed a lower degree of correlations with cortisol. Conjunction analyses indicated only a small degree of overlap between the stress networks in men and women at the threshold level of P < 0.01. Increased overlap of stress networks between the two genders was revealed when the threshold for conjunction analyses was relaxed to P < 0.05. Further, machine classification was used to differentiate the central stress responses between the two genders with over 94% accuracy. Our study may represent an initial step in uncovering the neurobiological basis underlying the contrasting health consequences of psychosocial stress in men and women.

Keywords: cerebral blood flow (CBF); arterial spin labeling (ASL); right prefrontal cortex (RPFC); left orbitofrontal cortex (LOrF); anterior cingulate cortex (ACC)

Correspondence should be addressed to Jiongjiong Wang, PhD, Center for Functional Neuroimaging, University of Pennsylvania, 3 West Gates, 3400 Spruce Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104. E-mail: wangj3{at}mail.med.upenn.edu

We thank Dr Heather Collins for assay of the salivary cortisol samples, which was supported by RIA/Biomarkers Core of the Diabetes Research Center DK 19525. This research was supported by a University of Pennsylvania Comprehensive Neuroscience Center pilot grant, NSF grant BCS0224007, NIH grants NS045839 and MH072576.

Received December 12, 2006. Accepted April 20, 2007.


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?


This article has been cited by other articles:


Home page
 Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USAHome page
I. Savic and P. Lindstrom
From the Cover: PET and MRI show differences in cerebral asymmetry and functional connectivity between homo- and heterosexual subjects
PNAS, July 8, 2008; 105(27): 9403 - 9408.
[Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]


Disclaimer:
Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.