Gender Differences in Hierarchical Cognitive Control of Emotion: An EEG Study

Gender difference in affective disorders prevalence, such as depression and anxiety, highlight the gender influence on emotional cognition. Moreover, as a vital mechanism of cognition, hierarchical cognitive control enables us to execute actions guided by the abstract goal, like performing sequential steps in cooking. However, the gender impact on the hierarchical cognitive control of emotion remains unknown. To enhance our comprehension of gender-specific mechanisms, we designed an emotion cognitive control paradigm with varying abstraction hierarchy. Sixteen males and sixteen females were recorded by 64-channel electroencephalography (EEG) under low- and high-level abstraction tasks. Then, we calculated the behavioral performance and EEG indicators, including power spectral density (PSD) and inter-trial phase coherence (ITC). The results showed that, females exhibited significantly shorter response times than males in low-level abstraction tasks, but not in high-level tasks. Besides, a significantly different change showed that, the relative beta-PSD and delta-ITC values in males had an increase from the low- to high-level task, while having a decrease in females. Specifically, the change in beta-band power was significantly correlated with the change in behavioral performance in females. These findings indicated that, as the emotional abstraction hierarchy raised, the better behavioral performance of females under low-level task gradually diminished, and there was contrasting change direction in the cognition control-related brain activity between males and females. Overall, our study first reveals the different patterns by gender in hierarchical cognitive control of emotion, offering new insights into gender-specific cerebral mechanisms.