Neuroscience Letters 515 (2012) 157–161 Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Neuroscience Letters jou rn al h om epage: www.elsevier.com/locate/neulet Common and differential brain responses in men and women to nonverbal emotional vocalizations by the same and opposite sex Ji-Won Chun a,b , Hae-Jeong Park b , Il-Ho Park c , Jae-Jin Kim a,b,∗ a Institute of Behavioral Science in Medicine, Department of Psychiatry, Yonsei University College of Medicine, 134 Shinchon-dong, Seodaemun-gu, Seoul, Republic of Korea b Department of Diagnostic Radiology and Research Institute of Radiological Science, Nuclear Medicine, Yonsei University College of Medicine, 134 Shinchon-dong, Seodaemun-gu, Seoul, Republic of Korea c Department of Psychiatry, Myongji Hospital, Kwandong University College of Medicine, Goyang, Republic of Korea a r t i c l e i n f o Article history: Received 31 December 2011 Received in revised form 6 March 2012 Accepted 12 March 2012 Keywords: Sex difference Laughter Crying Limbic system fMRI a b s t r a c t Nonverbal emotional vocalizations are one of the most elementary ways of communicating in humans. We examined the impact of sex differences on neural responses to laughter and crying produced by the same and opposite sex. Thirty subjects (15 women) underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging during a sex identification task for laughter, crying, and neutral voices. The parahippocampal gyrus was involved in both men and women while hearing laughter of the same sex, suggesting greater positive emotional processing and greater attention toward emotional context in response to laughter of the same sex than of the opposite sex. The posterior cingulate was involved in both men and women while hearing crying of the opposite sex, suggesting that empathic processing may occur more in response to crying of the opposite sex than of the same sex. Furthermore, brain responses to crying of the opposite sex seem to reflect upon men’s efforts to perform emotional regulation and women’s empathic concerns. © 2012 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Emotional communication is an efficient way of regulating social behavior. Nonverbal emotional vocalizations, one of the most elemental ways of communication, carry basic emotions and can be easily decoded [25]. They provide important cues for understand- ing the feelings of others in social interactions, which is referred to as empathy and involves both emotion sharing and emotional regulation [5]. In particular, laughter and crying are crucial ele- ments exhibiting an emotional state in humans. Other’s laughter elicits positive feelings from the perceiver and allows people to share positive experiences with one another [21], whereas crying is a communicative signal with a high potential to elicit empathy and emotional support [9]. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is a technique for detecting the changes in blood oxygenation that occur in response to neural activities, and is useful for mapping brain activities underlying emotional behaviors. For example, some fMRI studies have shown that listening to nonverbal emotional vocalizations activates the limbic cortices including the amygdala and insula [24]. ∗ Corresponding author at: Department of Psychiatry, Gangnam Severance Hos- pital, 211 Eonju-ro, Gangnam-gu, Seoul 135-720, Republic of Korea. Tel.: +82 2 2019 3341; fax: +82 2 3462 4304. E-mail address: jaejkim@yonsei.ac.kr (J.-J. Kim). Sex differences in brain responses to emotional stimuli have been also demonstrated. For example, while processing humor, women showed a stronger limbic reactivity including the amyg- dala, insula and anterior cingulate, whereas men used more evaluative, executive resources [11]. The orbitofrontal cortex and amygdala were selectively activated to anger cues in women, whereas a less discriminatory pattern of activation was shown in men [15]. Men as compared to women showed stronger amyg- dala activation when viewing fear-inducing pictures, suggesting a tendency for men to be sensitive to cues of aggression in their envi- ronment [26]. So far, sex differences in brain responses to nonverbal emotional vocalizations have been studied only for infant laughter and crying. In response to them, women showed deactivation in the anterior cingulate, but men did not, suggesting that women may be innately more competent in evaluating infant vocalizations [27]. Women’s response preference to infant laughter and crying was demonstrated by stronger activation in the amygdala and anterior cingulate in women than in men [23]. Taken together, sex differ- ences in the emotional processing implicate the primary limbic structure such as the amygdala and the paralimbic regions such as the insula, orbitofrontal cortex and anterior cingulate. Given that the paralimbic cortex is interposed between primary limbic regions and higher neocortical regions [16], it is worth being focused when studying the processing of nonverbal emotional vocalizations in which emotion and cognition may interact. Emotional vocalizations are important cues in social interaction not only for infants, but also for adults. The present study ventured 0304-3940/$ – see front matter © 2012 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.neulet.2012.03.038