Abstract
Many studies have reported sex differences in empathy and social skills. In this review, several lines of empirical evidences about sex differences in functions and anatomy of social brain are discussed. The most relevant differences involve face processing, facial expression recognition, response to baby schema, the ability to see faces in things, the processing of social interactions, the response to the others' pain, interest in social information, processing of gestures and actions, biological motion, erotic, and affective stimuli. Sex differences in oxytocin-based parental response are also reported. In conclusion, the female and male brains show several neuro-functional differences in various aspects of social cognition, and especially in emotional coding, face processing, and response to baby schema. An interpretation of this sexual dimorphism is provided in the view of evolutionary psychobiology.
Highlights
This review is relevant because it focuses on an extensive neuroimaging and electrophysiologica l literature on functional and anatomical sex differences in social cognition, revealing new and hitherto unknown knowledge
The female and male brains show several neuro‐functional differences in various aspects of social cognition, and especially in emotional coding, face processing, and response to baby schema. An interpretation of this sexual dimorphism is provided in the view of evolutionary psychobiology
We will examine a large corpus of behavioral, EEG/event-related potentials (ERPs), and neuroimaging evidence in the recent literature supporting the existence of sex differences in the social brain
Summary
While the classical neuroimaging literature reports a right hemispheric dominance for face processing in humans (Kanwisher et al, 1997; Rossion et al, 2003; Sergent et al, 1992), regardless of gender of viewers, new recent data have shown that face processing is less lateralized in females than males (Kiesow et al, 2020; Liu et al, 2020; Proverbio et al, 2010b; Proverbio & Galli, 2016). The literature is very inconsistent about hemispheric lateralization of facial processing since virtually no neuroimaging study has ever considered viewer's sex in the past At this regard, it is of great interest to note that face‐specific N170 responses of event-related potentials (ERPs) are found to be bilateral or even left‐sided in studies in which female participants are the majority (e.g., Jemel et al, 2005). The left face area in males was not responding to people's age (it did not discriminate between adult, children, or baby faces) but only the right one, while the age discriminative response was bilateral in females Overall, these findings fit with previous data providing evidence of a sex difference in the hemispheric lateralization of perceptual and cognitive processes. The lack of asymmetry in females might suggest that both face areas are specialized
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