Sex-specific neural activity when resolving cognitive interference in individuals with or without prior internalizing...

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Cognitive Psychology
• Psychiatry

Background:

• Cognitive interference processing is a key self-regulatory function.
• This capacity is often impaired in individuals with internalizing disorders.
• Sex differences in neural correlates of cognitive interference are not well understood.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate sex differences in brain activity during cognitive interference processing.
• To examine the impact of a history of internalizing disorders on these neural correlates.
• To identify sex-by-illness interactions in brain responses during cognitive interference tasks.

Main Methods:

• Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to measure blood-oxygenation-level-dependent (BOLD) responses.
• Participants included males and females with and without a history of internalizing disorders.
• The Simon task was employed to assess cognitive interference processing.

Main Results:

• Females showed greater deactivation in the superior frontal gyrus, inferior parietal lobe, and posterior cingulate cortex compared to males.
• Females with a history of internalizing disorders exhibited more pronounced deactivation in these regions than males with a similar history.
• Females with a history of internalizing disorders also showed greater activation in the right inferior frontal gyrus, indicating a significant sex-by-illness interaction.

Conclusions:

• A history of internalizing disorders disproportionately affects default mode network functioning in females.
• This history is associated with concurrent activation of the task-positive network in females during cognitive interference resolution.
• Findings highlight sex-specific neural mechanisms underlying cognitive interference in the context of internalizing disorders.