Tunç Birkan, Solmaz Berkan, Parker Drew, Satterthwaite Theodore D, Elliott Mark A, Calkins Monica E, Ruparel Kosha, Gur Raquel E, Gur Ruben C, Verma Ragini
Center for Biomedical Image Computing and Analytics, Department of Radiology.
Neuropsychiatry Section, Department of Psychiatry, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA.
Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2016 Feb 19;371(1688):20150111. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2015.0111. Epub 2016 Feb 1.
Recent years have witnessed an increased attention to studies of sex differences, partly because such differences offer important considerations for personalized medicine. While the presence of sex differences in human behaviour is well documented, our knowledge of their anatomical foundations in the brain is still relatively limited. As a natural gateway to fathom the human mind and behaviour, studies concentrating on the human brain network constitute an important segment of the research effort to investigate sex differences. Using a large sample of healthy young individuals, each assessed with diffusion MRI and a computerized neurocognitive battery, we conducted a comprehensive set of experiments examining sex-related differences in the meso-scale structures of the human connectome and elucidated how these differences may relate to sex differences at the level of behaviour. Our results suggest that behavioural sex differences, which indicate complementarity of males and females, are accompanied by related differences in brain structure across development. When using subnetworks that are defined over functional and behavioural domains, we observed increased structural connectivity related to the motor, sensory and executive function subnetworks in males. In females, subnetworks associated with social motivation, attention and memory tasks had higher connectivity. Males showed higher modularity compared to females, with females having higher inter-modular connectivity. Applying multivariate analysis, we showed an increasing separation between males and females in the course of development, not only in behavioural patterns but also in brain structure. We also showed that these behavioural and structural patterns correlate with each other, establishing a reliable link between brain and behaviour.
近年来，对性别差异研究的关注度有所提高，部分原因是这些差异为个性化医疗提供了重要考量。虽然人类行为中的性别差异已得到充分记录，但我们对其在大脑中的解剖学基础的了解仍然相对有限。作为探究人类思维和行为的自然途径，专注于人类大脑网络的研究构成了调查性别差异研究工作的重要部分。我们使用大量健康年轻个体的样本，每个个体都接受了扩散磁共振成像和计算机化神经认知测试，进行了一系列全面的实验，研究人类连接组中尺度结构的性别相关差异，并阐明这些差异如何与行为层面的性别差异相关。我们的结果表明，表明男性和女性互补性的行为性别差异伴随着整个发育过程中大脑结构的相关差异。当使用基于功能和行为领域定义的子网时，我们观察到男性中与运动、感觉和执行功能子网相关的结构连接性增加。在女性中，与社会动机、注意力和记忆任务相关的子网具有更高的连接性。与女性相比，男性表现出更高的模块化，而女性具有更高的模块间连接性。应用多变量分析，我们表明在发育过程中男性和女性之间的差异越来越大，不仅在行为模式上，而且在大脑结构上。我们还表明，这些行为和结构模式相互关联，在大脑和行为之间建立了可靠的联系。
