GENDER DIFFERENCES IN ELECTROPHYSIOLOGICAL RESPONSES TO FACIAL STIMULI

Background: A facial discrimination task was adapted to be used in an event-related potential (ERP) paradigm in order to evaluate whether yo ung women's brain responses to affective stimuli differed from those o f young men. Methods: The stimuli used to generate a late positive com ponent of the ERP, designated the ''P450,'' were male and female faces with neutral, sad, or happy facial expressions. Subjects were instruc ted to respond to the happy and sad faces but not to the neutral faces . The amplitude and latency of the P450 component was evaluated with r espect to the gender of the subject, as well as the gender and emotion al affect of the facial stimuli themselves. Results: In all subjects, the sad faces elicited longer latency and higher amplitude P450 compon ents as compared to the happy faces, Female subjects were found to gen erate significantly longer latency and higher amplitude P450 component s than male subjects to both happy and sad faces. All subjects were fo und to respond more quickly to: male happy faces > female happy faces > female sad faces > male sad faces. Conclusions: These data suggest t hat the morphology of the late positive component of the ERP differs d epending on the emotional expression of the stimuli, the gender of the facial stimulus, and the gender of the subject. Biol Psychiatry 1998; 44:281-289 (C) 1998 Society of Biological Psychiatry.