TY - JOUR
T1 - Association between resting-state functional connectivity and empathizing/systemizing
AU - Takeuchi, Hikaru
AU - Taki, Yasuyuki
AU - Nouchi, Rui
AU - Sekiguchi, Atsushi
AU - Hashizume, Hiroshi
AU - Sassa, Yuko
AU - Kotozaki, Yuka
AU - Miyauchi, Carlos Makoto
AU - Yokoyama, Ryoichi
AU - Iizuka, Kunio
AU - Nakagawa, Seishu
AU - Nagase, Tomomi
AU - Kunitoki, Keiko
AU - Kawashima, Ryuta
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank Yuki Yamada for operating the MRI scanner, Haruka Nouchi for conducting the psychological tests, the other assistants who helped with the experiments and the study, and the participants and all our other colleagues at IDAC, Tohoku University for their support. This study was supported by JST/RISTEX , JST/CREST , and a Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B) (KAKENHI 23700306 ) from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology . We would also like to thank Prof. Akio Wakabayashi for providing us with the Japanese version of the EQ-SQ questionnaire. The authors would like to thank Enago ( www.enago.jp ) for the English language review.
PY - 2014/10/1
Y1 - 2014/10/1
N2 - Empathizing is the drive to identify the mental status of other individuals and respond to it with an appropriate emotion; systemizing is the drive to analyze a system. Previously, we have shown that structures associated with the default mode network (DMN) and external attention system (EAS) are associated with empathizing and systemizing, respectively. Here we investigated the association between resting-state functional connectivity (RSFC) and empathizing/systemizing in 248 healthy young adults. We considered the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and bilateral dorsolateral prefrontal cortices (DLPFCs), which are key nodes of DMN and EAS, as seed regions, and investigated correlations across subjects between individual empathizing/systemizing and RSFC between each seed region and other brain regions. We found that higher empathizing was associated with larger RSFC between the mPFC and areas in (a) the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC), (b) precuneus, and (c) left superior temporal sulcus (STS). Furthermore, there was an interaction effect between sex and systemizing on RSFC between the left DLPFC and dACC: males showed positive correlations between this RSFC and systemizing, whereas females showed the opposite tendency. Thus, empathizing was associated with increased positive functional coupling with the key node and other nodes of DMN, as well as the area associated with feeling another's pain. Systemizing was associated with increased positive functional coupling between the key nodes of EAS in males. These findings provide further support for the concept of an association between DMN/EAS and empathizing/systemizing.
AB - Empathizing is the drive to identify the mental status of other individuals and respond to it with an appropriate emotion; systemizing is the drive to analyze a system. Previously, we have shown that structures associated with the default mode network (DMN) and external attention system (EAS) are associated with empathizing and systemizing, respectively. Here we investigated the association between resting-state functional connectivity (RSFC) and empathizing/systemizing in 248 healthy young adults. We considered the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and bilateral dorsolateral prefrontal cortices (DLPFCs), which are key nodes of DMN and EAS, as seed regions, and investigated correlations across subjects between individual empathizing/systemizing and RSFC between each seed region and other brain regions. We found that higher empathizing was associated with larger RSFC between the mPFC and areas in (a) the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC), (b) precuneus, and (c) left superior temporal sulcus (STS). Furthermore, there was an interaction effect between sex and systemizing on RSFC between the left DLPFC and dACC: males showed positive correlations between this RSFC and systemizing, whereas females showed the opposite tendency. Thus, empathizing was associated with increased positive functional coupling with the key node and other nodes of DMN, as well as the area associated with feeling another's pain. Systemizing was associated with increased positive functional coupling between the key nodes of EAS in males. These findings provide further support for the concept of an association between DMN/EAS and empathizing/systemizing.
KW - Default mode network
KW - Empathizing
KW - External attention system
KW - Functional connectivity
KW - Resting-state
KW - Systemizing
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U2 - 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2014.05.031
DO - 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2014.05.031
M3 - Article
C2 - 24844739
AN - SCOPUS:84903524093
SN - 1053-8119
VL - 99
SP - 312
EP - 322
JO - NeuroImage
JF - NeuroImage
ER -