Men are more risk prone than women, but the underlying basis remains unclear. To investigate this question, we developed a trait-like measure of risk propensity which we correlated with resting-state functional connectivity to identify sex differences. Specifically, we used short- and long-range functional connectivity densities to identify associated brain regions and examined their functional connectivities in resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data collected from a large sample of healthy young volunteers. We found that men had a higher level of general risk propensity (GRP) than women. At the neural level, although they shared a common neural correlate of GRP in a network centered at the right inferior frontal gyrus, men and women differed in a network centered at the right secondary somatosensory cortex, which included the bilateral dorsal anterior/middle insular cortices and the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex. In addition, men and women differed in a local network centered at the left inferior orbitofrontal cortex. Most of the regions identified by this resting-state fMRI study have been previously implicated in risk processing when people make risky decisions. This study provides a new perspective on the brain-behavioral relationships in risky decision making and contributes to our understanding of sex differences in risk propensity.
1.Chinese Acad Sci, Inst Psychol, Key Lab Behav Sci, Beijing 100190, Peoples R China 2.Univ Adelaide, Sch Psychol, Adelaide, SA, Australia 3.Chinese Acad Sci, Brainnetome Ctr, Beijing 100190, Peoples R China 4.Chinese Acad Sci, Inst Automat, Natl Lab Pattern Recognit, Beijing 100190, Peoples R China 5.Tianjin Med Univ, Gen Hosp, Dept Radiol, Tianjin 300052, Peoples R China 6.Univ Elect Sci & Technol China, Sch Life Sci & Technol, Minist Educ, Key Lab NeuroInformat, Chengdu 610054, Peoples R China 7.Univ Queensland, Queensland Brain Inst, Brisbane, Qld, Australia
Recommended Citation:
Zhou, Yuan,Li, Shu,Dunn, John,et al. The neural coorelates of risk propensity in males and females using resting-state fMRI[J]. FRONTIERS IN BEHAVIORAL NEUROSCIENCE,2014,8(0):1-13.
