title: Sex differences in intrinsic brain functional connectivity underlying human shyness.
abstract: Shyness is a fundamental trait associated with social-emotional maladaptive behaviors, including many forms of psychopathology. Neuroimaging studies have demonstrated that hyper-responsivity to social and emotional stimuli occurs in the frontal cortex and limbic system in shy individuals, but the relationship between shyness and brain-wide functional connectivity remains incompletely understood. Using resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging, we addressed this issue by exploring the relationship between regional functional connectivity strength (rFCS) and scores of shyness in a cohort of 61 healthy young adults and controlling for the effects of social and trait anxiety scores. We observed that the rFCS of the insula positively correlated with shyness scores regardless of sex. Furthermore, we found that there were significant sex-by-shyness interactions in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex and insula (two core nodes of the salience network) as well as the subgenual anterior cingulate cortex: the rFCS values of these regions positively correlated with shyness scores in females but negatively correlated in males. Taken together, we provide evidence for intrinsic functional connectivity differences in individuals with different degrees of shyness and that these differences are sex-dependent. These findings might have important implications on the understanding of biological mechanisms underlying emotional and cognitive processing associated with shyness.
authors.affiliation: Huaxi MR Research Center (HMRRC), Department of Radiology, West China Hospital of Sichuan University, Chengdu 610041, China, School of Sociality and Psychology, Southwest University for Nationalities, Chengdu 610041, China.
authors.forename: Xun
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning & IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China.
authors.forename: Siqi
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory for Neuroinformation, Centre for Information in BioMedicine, School of Life Science and Technology, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 610051, China.
authors.forename: Keith Maurice
authors.initials: KM
authors.lastname: Kendrick
authors.affiliation: Huaxi MR Research Center (HMRRC), Department of Radiology, West China Hospital of Sichuan University, Chengdu 610041, China.
authors.forename: Xi
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Wu
authors.affiliation: Huaxi MR Research Center (HMRRC), Department of Radiology, West China Hospital of Sichuan University, Chengdu 610041, China.
authors.forename: Li
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Yao
authors.affiliation: Huaxi MR Research Center (HMRRC), Department of Radiology, West China Hospital of Sichuan University, Chengdu 610041, China.
authors.forename: Du
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Lei
authors.affiliation: Departments of Psychiatry and Oncology, State Key Laboratory of Biotherapy, West China Hospital of Sichuan University, Chengdu 610041, China, and.
authors.forename: Weihong
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Kuang
authors.affiliation: Departments of Psychiatry and Oncology, State Key Laboratory of Biotherapy, West China Hospital of Sichuan University, Chengdu 610041, China, and.
authors.forename: Feng
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Bi
authors.affiliation: Huaxi MR Research Center (HMRRC), Department of Radiology, West China Hospital of Sichuan University, Chengdu 610041, China.
authors.forename: Xiaoqi
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Huang
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning & IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China, yong.he@bnu.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Yong
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: He
authors.affiliation: Huaxi MR Research Center (HMRRC), Department of Radiology, West China Hospital of Sichuan University, Chengdu 610041, China, Department of Psychology, School of Public Administration, Sichuan University, Chengdu, China.
authors.forename: Qiyong
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Gong
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001007:Anxiety / Q000523:psychology; D001921:Brain / Q000503:physiopathology*; D015331:Cohort Studies; D005260:Female; D006179:Gyrus Cinguli / Q000503:physiopathology; D006801:Humans; D008032:Limbic System / Q000503:physiopathology; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D009434:Neural Pathways / Q000503:physiopathology*; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D017397:Prefrontal Cortex / Q000503:physiopathology; D012727:Sex Characteristics; D012792:Shyness; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: insula; resting-state fMRI; salience network; sex difference; shyness