男女性别在大脑发育中的一个关键特征：男孩大脑结构的可变性大于女孩。
A Key Characteristic of Sex Differences in the Developing Brain: Greater Variability in Brain Structure of Boys than Girls.
机构信息
Brain and Development Research Center, Leiden University, RB Leiden, The Netherlands.
Department of Biostatistics, Institute of Basic Medical Sciences, University of Oslo, Blindern, Oslo, Norway.
出版信息
Cereb Cortex. 2018 Aug 1;28(8):2741-2751. doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhx154.
In many domains, including cognition and personality, greater variability is observed in males than in females in humans. However, little is known about how variability differences between sexes are represented in the brain. The present study tested whether there is a sex difference in variance in brain structure using a cohort of 643 males and 591 females aged between 3 and 21 years. The broad age-range of the sample allowed us to test if variance differences in the brain differ across age. We observed significantly greater male than female variance for several key brain structures, including cerebral white matter and cortex, hippocampus, pallidum, putamen, and cerebellar cortex volumes. The differences were observed at both upper and lower extremities of the distributions and appeared stable across development. These findings move beyond mean levels by showing that sex differences were pronounced for variability, thereby providing a novel perspective on sex differences in the developing brain.
在许多领域，包括认知和人格，男性的变异性比女性更大。然而，人们对性别之间的变异性差异在大脑中是如何表现的知之甚少。本研究使用了一个年龄在 3 至 21 岁之间的 643 名男性和 591 名女性的队列，测试了大脑结构中的变异性是否存在性别差异。样本的广泛年龄范围使我们能够测试大脑中的变异性差异是否随年龄而变化。我们观察到几个关键的大脑结构，包括大脑白质和皮层、海马体、苍白球、壳核和小脑皮层的体积，男性的变异性明显大于女性。这些差异在分布的上下两端都有观察到，并且在整个发育过程中都很稳定。这些发现超越了平均值，表明变异性方面的性别差异明显，从而为发育中的大脑的性别差异提供了一个新的视角。
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