title: Sex Differences in the Neuromagnetic Cortical Response to Biological Motion.
abstract: Body motion is a rich source of information for social interaction, and visual biological motion processing may be considered as a hallmark of social cognition. It is unclear, however, whether the social brain is sex specific. Here we assess sex impact on the magnetoencephalographic (MEG) cortical response to point-light human locomotion. Sex differences in the cortical MEG response to biological motion occur mostly over the right brain hemisphere. At early latencies, females exhibit a greater activation than males over the right parietal, left temporal, and right temporal cortex, a core of the social brain. At later latencies, the boosts of activation are greater in males over the right frontal and occipital cortices. The findings deliver the first evidence for gender-dependent modes in the time course and topography of the neural circuitry underpinning visual processing of biological motion. The outcome represents a framework for studying sex differences in the social brain in psychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Magnetic Resonance, Medical School, Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany.
authors.forename: Marina A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Pavlova
authors.affiliation: Center for Pediatric Clinical Studies (CPCS), Children's Hospital, Medical School, Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany Centre for Women's Health, Medical School, Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany.
authors.forename: Alexander N
authors.initials: AN
authors.lastname: Sokolov
authors.affiliation: Center de Recherches sur la Cognition et l'Apprentissage (CeRCA), CNRS-UMR 7295, University of Poitiers, Poitiers, France Department of Sport Sciences, University of Poitiers, Poitiers, France.
authors.forename: Christel
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Bidet-Ildei
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D004292:Dominance, Cerebral; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008124:Locomotion; D015225:Magnetoencephalography; D008297:Male; D009039:Motion Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D012737:Sex Factors; D012938:Social Perception; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: MEG; biological motion; dynamic topography; gender; neural circuitry; point-light displays; sex differences; social brain; time course