Sex differences in the development of brain mechanisms for processing biological motion

Anderson, Laura; Bolling, Danielle; Schelinski, Stefanie; Coffman, Marika; Pelphrey, Kevin A.; Kaiser, Martha D.

doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2013.07.040

Cited by 62 publications

(70 citation statements)

References 77 publications

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“…Considering that autism and autistic traits occur at different rates across sexes (Baron-Cohen et al, 2001), and neural response to biological motion varies in a sex-dependent manner (Anderson et al, 2013), sex differences should specifically be targeted in future work.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For example, Anderson et al (2013) found a negative association between a measure of social impairment associated with autism and activation to biological motion in frontal and partial regions in a non-clinical sample. However, these authors only considered traits in the social domain, and did not report descriptive statistics for this measure making it difficult to assess what range of the spectrum was captured in this study.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Neural Response to Biological Motion in Healthy Adults Varies as a Function of Autistic-Like Traits

Puglia

Morris

2017

Front. Neurosci.

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Perception of biological motion is an important social cognitive ability that has been mapped to specialized brain regions. Perceptual deficits and neural differences during biological motion perception have previously been associated with autism, a disorder classified by social and communication difficulties and repetitive and restricted interests and behaviors. However, the traits associated with autism are not limited to diagnostic categories, but are normally distributed within the general population and show the same patterns of heritability across the continuum. In the current study, we investigate whether self-reported autistic-like traits in healthy adults are associated with variable neural response during passive viewing of biological motion displays. Results show that more autistic-like traits, particularly those associated with the communication domain, are associated with increased neural response in key regions involved in social cognitive processes, including prefrontal and left temporal cortices. This distinct pattern of activation might reflect differential neurodevelopmental processes for individuals with varying autistic-like traits, and highlights the importance of considering the full trait continuum in future work.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neural Response to Biological Motion in Healthy Adults Varies as a Function of Autistic-Like Traits

Puglia

Morris

2017

Front. Neurosci.

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“…Another very important aspect to be considered in development is gender. Indeed, several studies have investigated the sex differences in the development of several neural functions during childhood (Koolschijn & Crone 2013;Anderson, Bolling, Schelinski, Coffman, Pelphrey et al, 2013), also during action observation (Shaw et al, 2011(Shaw et al, , 2012. In the present study we included a balance of male and female participants in both the children's and the adults' groups.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Action observation network in childhood: a comparative fMRI study with adults

Biagi

Cioni

Fogassi

et al. 2015

Developmental Science

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Very little is known about the action observation network and the mirror neuron system (AON/MNS) in children and its age-related properties compared with those observed in adults. In the present fMRI study we explored the activation of areas belonging to the AON/MNS in children and adults during observation of complex hand-grasping actions, as compared to observation of simple grasping acts executed with the left and the right hand, seen from a first person perspective. The results indicate that during the action observation tasks in children there was activation of a cortical network similar to that found in adults, including the premotor cortex, the posterior part of the inferior frontal gyrus and the posterior parietal lobe. However, the activation in children was more widespread and showed a higher inter-subject variability compared with adults. Furthermore, the activated network seems more lateralized to the left hemisphere in adults and more bilateral in children, with a linear growth of lateralization index as a function of age. Finally, in children the activation in the anterior intraparietal cortex (AIP) of each hemisphere was higher during observation of the contralateral hand (hand identity effect) and during the observation of complex actions relative to simple grasping acts, confirming the role of AIP for action-related hand identity previously described in adults. These results support the assumption that structure and size of action representations are sensitive to mechanisms of development and show physiological plasticity. These properties of the AON/MNS could constitute a powerful tool for spontaneous reorganization and recovery of motor deficits after brain injury in children and in adults, as well as for specific rehabilitation programmes.

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“…BMP with point-light displays can also convey a range of socially relevant information, including gender (Mather and Murdoch, 1994), affect (Pollick et al, 2001), personality traits such as trustworthiness (Heberlein et al, 2004), and identity (Troje et al, 2005; Jokisch et al, 2006). BMP has high inter-individual variability based on many different factors such as development conditions (Pavlova et al, 2001; Carter and Pelphrey, 2006), gender effect (Anderson et al, 2013; Pavlova et al, 2014), social cognition and motor imagery abilities (Miller and Saygin, 2013). In a recent study, Gilaie-Dotan et al (2013) found that the neuroanatomical structures of the posterior superior temporal sulcus and ventral medial prefrontal cortex were linked with biological motion detection performance.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Prediction of Biological Motion Perception Performance from Intrinsic Brain Network Regional Efficiency

Wang

Zhang

Liang

et al. 2016

Front. Hum. Neurosci.

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Biological motion perception (BMP) refers to the ability to perceive the moving form of a human figure from a limited amount of stimuli, such as from a few point lights located on the joints of a moving body. BMP is commonplace and important, but there is great inter-individual variability in this ability. This study used multiple regression model analysis to explore the association between BMP performance and intrinsic brain activity, in order to investigate the neural substrates underlying inter-individual variability of BMP performance. The resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) and BMP performance data were collected from 24 healthy participants, for whom intrinsic brain networks were constructed, and a graph-based network efficiency metric was measured. Then, a multiple linear regression model was used to explore the association between network regional efficiency and BMP performance. We found that the local and global network efficiency of many regions was significantly correlated with BMP performance. Further analysis showed that the local efficiency rather than global efficiency could be used to explain most of the BMP inter-individual variability, and the regions involved were predominately located in the Default Mode Network (DMN). Additionally, discrimination analysis showed that the local efficiency of certain regions such as the thalamus could be used to classify BMP performance across participants. Notably, the association pattern between network nodal efficiency and BMP was different from the association pattern of static directional/gender information perception. Overall, these findings show that intrinsic brain network efficiency may be considered a neural factor that explains BMP inter-individual variability.

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Sex differences in the development of brain mechanisms for processing biological motion

Cited by 62 publications

References 77 publications

Neural Response to Biological Motion in Healthy Adults Varies as a Function of Autistic-Like Traits

Neural Response to Biological Motion in Healthy Adults Varies as a Function of Autistic-Like Traits

Action observation network in childhood: a comparative fMRI study with adults

Prediction of Biological Motion Perception Performance from Intrinsic Brain Network Regional Efficiency

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