Internationalisation of law in the digital information society

Men are traditionally thought to have more problems in understanding women compared to understanding other men, though evidence supporting this assumption remains sparse. Recently, it has been shown, however, that meńs problems in recognizing women’s emotions could be linked to difficulties in extracting the relevant information from the eye region, which remain one of the richest sources of social information for the attribution of mental states to others. To determine possible differences in the neural correlates underlying emotion recognition from female, as compared to male eyes, a modified version of the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test in combination with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was applied to a sample of 22 participants. We found that men actually had twice as many problems in recognizing emotions from female as compared to male eyes, and that these problems were particularly associated with a lack of activation in limbic regions of the brain (including the hippocampus and the rostral anterior cingulate cortex). Moreover, men revealed heightened activation of the right amygdala to male stimuli regardless of condition (sex vs. emotion recognition). Thus, our findings highlight the function of the amygdala in the affective component of theory of mind (ToM) and in empathy, and provide further evidence that men are substantially less able to infer mental states expressed by women, which may be accompanied by sex-specific differences in amygdala activity

Sex differences in the neural correlates of aggression

Although sex differences in aggression have been investigated for decades, little is known about the underlying neurobiology of this phenomenon. To address this gap, the present study implemented a social reactive aggression paradigm in 20 women and 22 men, employing a modified Taylor Aggression Task (mTAT) to provoke aggressive behavior in an fMRI setting. Subjects were provoked by money subtraction from a fake opponent and given the opportunity to retaliate likewise. In the absence of behavioral differences, male and female subjects showed differential brain activation patterns in response to provocation. Men had higher left amygdala activation during high provocation. This amygdala activation correlated with trait anger scores in men, but not in women. Also, men showed a positive association between orbitofrontal cortex, rectal gyrus and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) activity in the provocation contrast and their tendency to respond aggressively, whereas women displayed a negative association. As the rectal gyrus and OFC have been attributed a crucial role in automatic emotion regulation, this finding points toward the assumption that highly aggressive men use automatic emotion regulation to a greater extent in response to provocation compared to highly aggressive women

A motivational-volitional program for women after breast cancer increases physical activity 12 months post rehabilitation - a prospective controlled trial

Antisocial behavior and aggression are prominent symptoms in several psychiatric disorders including antisocial personality disorder. An established precursor to aggression is a frustrating event, which can elicit anger or exasperation, thereby prompting aggressive responses. While some studies have investigated the neural correlates of frustration and aggression, examination of their relation to trait aggression in healthy populations are rare. Based on a screening of 550 males, we formed two extreme groups, one including individuals reporting high (n=21) and one reporting low (n=18) trait aggression. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) at 3T, all participants were put through a frustration task comprising unsolvable anagrams of German nouns. Despite similar behavioral performance, males with high trait aggression reported higher ratings of negative affect and anger after the frustration task. Moreover, they showed relatively decreased activation in the frontal brain regions and the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) as well as relatively less amygdala activation in response to frustration. Our findings indicate distinct frontal and limbic processing mechanisms following frustration modulated by trait aggression. In response to a frustrating event, HA individuals show some of the personality characteristics and neural processing patterns observed in abnormally aggressive populations. Highlighting the impact of aggressive traits on the behavioral and neural responses to frustration in non-psychiatric extreme groups can facilitate further characterization of neural dysfunctions underlying psychiatric disorders that involve abnormal frustration processing and aggression

Le Monde

15 octobre 18641864/10/15 (A5,N282).Appartient à l’ensemble documentaire : BbLevt

Figure 2

<p>(a) Statistical parametric maps and (b) parameter estimates illustrating significant condition–by-stimulus-type interaction effects for the rACC (MNI: −6,30,−10; <i>p_FWE-SVC</i> = 0.005; <i>z</i> = 3.85; cluster-size(<i>k</i>) = 194), right hippocampus (MNI: 32,−8,−26; p_FWEc = 0.025; <i>z</i> = 4.37; <i>k</i> = 130), precuneus (MNI: 28,−70,36; <i>p_FWEc</i> = 0.034; <i>z</i> = 4.54; <i>k</i> = 494), and dlPFC (MNI: 52,32,22; <i>p_FWEc</i> = 0.046; <i>z</i> = 3.85; <i>k</i> = 291). All coordinates reference the coordinate system of the Montreal Neurological Institute (MNI). Color bar indicates z<i>-</i>statistic value.</p

Figure 1

<p>(a) Bar chart illustrating performance accuracy (% correct) and (b) line plot illustrating reaction time measures over conditions (emotion vs. gender recognition) and types of stimuli (male vs. female eyes). Significance bars and asterisks designate the significance of both recognition accuracy and reaction times for the main effects of condition and the condition by eyes type interactions.</p