Social interaction is critical to emotional well-being. Previous studies have suggested sex differences in the perception of social interaction. However, the findings depend on the nature of interactions and whether it involves facial emotions. Here, we explored sex differences in neural responses to the perception of social interaction using the Human Connectome Project data. Participants (n = 969, 505 women) were engaged in a social cognition task with geometric objects moving and colliding to simulate social interaction. Behaviorally, men relative to women demonstrated higher accuracy in perceiving social vs. random interactions. Men vs. women showed higher activation in the right superior temporal gyrus, bilateral occipital and posterior cingulate cortex and precuneus, and women vs. men showed higher activation in the right inferior frontal cortex, during exposure to social vs. random interactions. In whole-brain regressions, the differences in accuracy rate in identifying social vs. random interactions (ARSOC – ARRAN) were associated with higher activation in the paracentral lobule (PCL) and lower activation in bilateral anterior insula (AI), pre-supplementary motor area (preSMA), and left middle frontal gyrus (MFG) in men and women combined, lower activation in bilateral AI, preSMA and left MFG in men alone, and higher activation in the PCL and the medial orbitofrontal cortex in women alone. The latter sex differences were confirmed by slope tests. Further, the PCL activity mediated the correlation between an internalizing syndromal score, as assessed by the Achenbach Self-Report, and (ARSOC – ARRAN) across all subjects. These findings highlighted sex differences in the behavioral and neural processes underlying the perception of social interaction, as well as the influence of internalizing traits on these processes.

中文翻译：

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对社会互动感知的神经反应的性别差异


社交互动对于情绪健康至关重要。先前的研究表明，对社交互动的看法存在性别差异。然而，研究结果取决于互动的性质以及是否涉及面部情绪。在这里，我们使用人类连接组计划数据探索了对社交互动感知的神经反应的性别差异。参与者（n = 969，505 名女性）参与了一项社会认知任务，通过几何物体的移动和碰撞来模拟社会互动。在行为上，相对于女性，男性在感知社会互动和随机互动方面表现出更高的准确性。在暴露于社交与随机互动期间，男性与女性在右侧颞上回、双侧枕叶和后扣带皮层以及楔前叶表现出更高的激活，而女性与男性在右侧额下皮层表现出更高的激活。在全脑回归中，识别社交与随机交互（ARSOC – ARRAN）的准确率差异与旁中央小叶（PCL）的较高激活和双侧前岛叶（AI）、预补充运动的较低激活有关男性和女性的双侧 AI、preSMA 和左额中回 (MFG) 的激活较低，而女性的 PCL 和内侧眶额皮质的激活较高。后者的性别差异通过斜率测试得到证实。此外，PCL 活性介导了所有受试者的内化综合征评分（根据阿亨巴赫自我报告评估）与 (ARSOC – ARRAN) 之间的相关性。 这些发现强调了社会互动感知背后的行为和神经过程的性别差异，以及内化特征对这些过程的影响。