Everyone usually remembers stressful situations that happen during their life. Recalling stressful memories often times contributes to feelings of fear, anxiety, and depression. However, how each person perceives a stress-related memory differs by gender and is unique to each person’s experiences. People usually perceive women as being more stressed and on edge while men, for the most part, are usually seen as more in control of their emotions. In Dr. Jelena Radulovic’s talk, she talked about how men and women respond differently to stress due to more extensive branching of the neurons in the VTA in females, leading to more pronounced responses to stress as compared to men. Her finding was fascinating in that it showed that men and women have the same amount of neurons, but differed in the branching and interconnectedness, leading to different responses to stress and stress-related memories. Additionally, she found that the heightened branching of the neurons in the VTA led to increased projections in the dorsal hippocampus that may be linked to the heightened vulnerability of females to anxiety disorders, supported by the findings from another study done by Dr. Lisa Y. Maeng and Dr. Mohammed R. Milad that suggested that “Women are twice as likely as men to develop stress- and anxiety-related psychiatric disorders.” Understanding differences between brain anatomy of men and women can be very useful in finding more efficient ways to treat disorders like anxiety that are more prevalent in women.
Dr. Radulovic’s study helps to better understand why women tend to respond differently in stressful situations. In her study, she also talked about how stress-related memories tend to trigger feelings of anxiety and fear. Dr. Maeng and Dr. Milad also found a correlation between stress, fear, and anxiety where they found that “the critical brain regions that respond to stress are shared with those implicated in anxiety disorders and fear neurocircuitry, suggesting that these responses are interrelated and can modulate each other.” To test the correlation of stress and fear in men and women, Dr. Maeng and Dr. Milad conducted a study where they looked for the differing effects of psychosocial stressors during a fear-conditioning task in men and women taking oral contraceptives. They found that, “Stressed men displayed reduced fear conditioning, which correlated with impaired fear responses in the anterior cingulate cortex and amygdala, whereas stressed women showed enhanced fear learning, which correlated with facilitated differential responses within these same brain regions.” Their study further suggests and supports Dr. Radulovic’s findings of the different responses to stress in men and women.
Understanding how male and female brains differ may help better understand the differences between sexes that people tend to stereotype women for, such as being overly stressed and overly sensitive. Dr. Radulovic’s research not only found a correlation between stress-related memories that contribute to fear and anxiety, but also that women have more extensive branching of neurons that are more sensitive and reactive to stimuli, which correlates to women being more at risk for anxiety when placed in stressful situations. Supporting her research, the study by Dr. Maeng and Dr. Milad found that women have heightened responses to fear when placed in stressful situations as compared to men, attributing to a greater sensitivity to stressful and traumatic life experiences in women.
References:
Maeng, Lisa Y and Mohammed R Milad. “Sex differences in anxiety disorders: Interactions between fear, stress, and gonadal hormones” Hormones and behavior vol. 76 (2015): 106-17.
Jovasevic, Vladimir and Radulovic, Jelena, et al. “GABAergic Mechanisms Regulated by MiR-33 Encode State-Dependent Fear.” Nature Neuroscience, vol. 18, no. 9, 2015, pp. 1265–1271., doi:10.1038/nn.4084.
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