Frontal late positivity in dental phobia: A study on gender differences

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• 作者：Anne Schienle  ; ;   ; ^{anne.schienle@uni-graz.at} ; Angelika Kö ; chel ; Verena Leutgeb
• 关键词：Dental phobia ; Gender differences ; EEG ; Event-related potentials ; Affective pictures
• 刊名：Biological Psychology
• 出版年：2011
• 出版时间：December 2011
• 年：2011
• 卷：88
• 期：2-3
• 页码：263-269
• 全文大小：671 K

文摘

Although dental phobia afflicts men and women, gender differences in neural correlates of this disorder have not been investigated thus far. We recorded event-related potential (ERPs) in 30 individuals with dental phobia (15 women, 15 men with comparable disorder severity) and 30 nonphobic controls (15 women, 15 men) while they passively viewed pictures depicting dental treatment, generally fear-eliciting, disgust-eliciting and neutral contents.

Male and female individuals with dental phobia as compared with controls displayed an enlarged centro-parietal late positivity (300?500 ms). Gender difference concerned prefrontal ERPs. Only men with dentophobia showed an enhanced positivity towards the phobic relative to the neutral pictures in the time window between 300 and 1500 ms. Such a differentiation was absent in the other groups (male controls, female phobics, female controls). This finding indicates a gender-dependent recruitment of frontal attention networks in dental phobia and might reflect that male and female sufferers of dentophobia differ with regard to controlled attention focusing and cognitive avoidance during exposure.