MEN AND WOMEN PROCESS EMOTIONS DIFFERENTLY
Women rate emotional
images as more emotionally stimulating than men do and are more likely to
remember them. However, there are no gender-related differences in emotional
appraisal as far as neutral images are concerned. These were the findings of a
large-scale study by a research team at the University of Basel that focused on
determining the gender-dependent relationship between emotions, memory
performance and brain activity. The results will be published in the latest
issue of the Journal of Neuroscience.
It is known that women
often consider emotional events to be more emotionally stimulating than men do.
Earlier studies have shown that emotions influence our memory: the more emotional
a situation is, the more likely we are to remember it. This raises the question
as to whether women often outperform men in memory tests because of the way
they process emotions. A research team from the University of Basel's
"Molecular and Cognitive Neurosciences" Transfaculty Research
Platform attempted to find out.
With the help of 3,398
test subjects from four sub-trials, the researchers were able to demonstrate
that females rated emotional image content -- especially negative content -- as
more emotionally stimulating than their male counterparts did. In the case of
neutral images, however, there were no gender-related differences in emotional
appraisal. In a subsequent memory test, female participants could freely recall
significantly more images than the male participants. Surprisingly though,
women had a particular advantage over men when recalling positive images.
"This would suggest that gender-dependent differences in emotional
processing and memory are due to different mechanisms," says study leader
Dr Annette Milnik.
Increased brain
activity
Using fMRI data from
696 test subjects, the researchers were also able to show that stronger
appraisal of negative emotional image content by the female participants is
linked to increased brain activity in motoric regions. "This result would
support the common belief that women are more emotionally expressive than
men," explained Dr Klara Spalek, lead author of the study.
The findings also help
to provide a better understanding of gender-specific differences in information
processing. This knowledge is important, because many neuropsychiatric
illnesses also exhibit gender-related differences. The study is part of a
research project led by professors Dominique de Quervain and Andreas
Papassotiropoulos at the University of Basel, which aims to increase the
understanding of neuronal and molecular mechanisms of human memory and thereby
facilitate the development of new treatments.
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