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Cerebral Cortex Advance Access originally published online on October 8, 2008
Cerebral Cortex 2009 19(6):1303-1312; doi:10.1093/cercor/bhn172
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© 2008 The Authors
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/uk/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Sex-Related Differences in Neural Activity during Risk Taking: An fMRI Study

Tatia M. C. Lee1,2,3, Chetwyn C. H. Chan4, Ada W. S. Leung1,4, Peter T. Fox5 and Jia-Hong Gao6

1 Laboratory of Neuropsychology, 2 Laboratory of Cognitive Affective Neuroscience, 3 The State Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong, 4 Applied Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory, Department of Rehabilitation Sciences, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Pokfulam, Hong Kong, 5 Research Imaging Center, University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, San Antonio, TX 78249, USA, 6 Department of Radiology, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA

Address correspondence to Tatia M. C. Lee, PhD, K610, Laboratory of Neuropsychology, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong. Email: tmclee{at}hkusua.hku.hk.

This study explored sex effects on the process of risk-taking. We observed that the female participants (n = 10) showed stronger activation in the right insula and bilateral orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) than did the male participants (n = 12) while they were performing in the Risky-Gains task. The female participants also showed stronger activations in the precentral, postcentral, and paracentral regions after receiving punishment feedback. In addition, the strength of neural activity in the insula correlated with the rate of risky behaviors for the female participants but not for the male participants. Similarly, the percent signal changes in the right OFC correlated negatively with the rate of selecting risky choices for the female group. These findings strongly suggest a sex-related influence modulating brain activity during risk-taking tasks. When taking the same level of risk, relative to men, women tend to engage in more neural processing involving the insula and the OFC to update and valuate possible uncertainty associated with risk-taking decision making. These results are consistent with the value-based decision-making model and offer insights into the possible neural mechanisms underlying the different risk-taking attitudes of men and women.

Key Words: insula • neuroimaging • orbitofrontal cortex • risk taking • sex differences


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