title: Gender Influences on Brain Responses to Errors and Post-Error Adjustments.
abstract: Sexual dimorphisms have been observed in many species, including humans, and extend to the prevalence and presentation of important mental disorders associated with performance monitoring malfunctions. However, precisely which underlying differences between genders contribute to the alterations observed in psychiatric diseases is unknown. Here, we compare behavioural and neural correlates of cognitive control functions in 438 female and 436 male participants performing a flanker task while EEG was recorded. We found that males showed stronger performance-monitoring-related EEG amplitude modulations which were employed to predict subjects' genders with ~72% accuracy. Females showed more post-error slowing, but both samples did not differ in regard to response-conflict processing and coupling between the error-related negativity (ERN) and consecutive behavioural slowing. Furthermore, we found that the ERN predicted consecutive behavioural slowing within subjects, whereas its overall amplitude did not correlate with post-error slowing across participants. These findings elucidate specific gender differences in essential neurocognitive functions with implications for clinical studies. They highlight that within- and between-subject associations for brain potentials cannot be interpreted in the same way. Specifically, despite higher general amplitudes in males, it appears that the dynamics of coupling between ERN and post-error slowing between men and women is comparable.
authors.affiliation: Otto-von-Guericke University, Institute of Psychology, D-39106 Magdeburg, Germany.|Center for Behavioral Brain Sciences, D-39106 Magdeburg, Germany.
authors.forename: Adrian G
authors.initials: AG
authors.lastname: Fischer
authors.affiliation: University of Nottingham, School of Psychology, Nottingham NG7 2RD, UK.|Radboud University, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, 6525 HR Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Claudia
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Danielmeier
authors.affiliation: Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Department of Neurology, D-04103 Leipzig, Germany.|Day Clinic for Cognitive Neurology, University Clinic Leipzig, D-04103 Leipzig, Germany.
authors.forename: Arno
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Villringer
authors.affiliation: Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Department of Neurology, D-04103 Leipzig, Germany.|Day Clinic for Cognitive Neurology, University Clinic Leipzig, D-04103 Leipzig, Germany.
authors.forename: Tilmann A
authors.initials: TA
authors.lastname: Klein
authors.affiliation: Otto-von-Guericke University, Institute of Psychology, D-39106 Magdeburg, Germany.|Center for Behavioral Brain Sciences, D-39106 Magdeburg, Germany.|Radboud University, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, 6525 HR Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Markus
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Ullsperger
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001519:Behavior; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D003071:Cognition; D004569:Electroencephalography; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D012737:Sex Factors; D055815:Young Adult