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

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 (300–1500 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.

► Event-related potentials in dentophobics and controls.
► Presentation of disorder-relevant and irrelevant affective pictures.
► Patients showed phobia-specific enlarged centro-parietal late positivity.
► Gender differences in prefrontal positivity during symptom provocation.
► Gender-dependent recruitment of frontal attention networks in dentophobia.