Gender_Functional_Connectivity_Dataset

fMRI dataset from 48 healthy men and women (20 F) undergoing emotion regulation task (view/suppress emotional reaction to emotional pictures) and self-reported negative affect behavioral data. We were interested in whether men and women differed in their functional connectivity (FC) pattern while viewing versus regulating negative emotion induced by highly salient pictures, and whether this pattern related to their self-reported negative affect and suppression success. Despite women reporting more negative affect, both genders had comparable suppression success. Moreover, differences emerged between men and women’s FC patterns. During the regulation of negative emotion, better suppression in women was associated with stronger FC within a cingulo-opercular network, while men exhibited stronger FC within posterior regions of the ventral attentional network. We conclude that due to their propensity for higher emotional reactivity, women may employ a frontal top-down control network to downregulate negative emotion, while men may redirect attention away from the aversive stimulus by using posterior regions of the ventral attention network.