Department of Women's and Children's Health, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm Health Care Services, Stockholm 11330, Sweden.
Department of Neuroscience, Human Genetics and Cognitive Functions, Institut Pasteur, Paris 75015, France.
Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci. 2020 Jun 23;15(4):423-436. doi: 10.1093/scan/nsaa064.
A female advantage in social cognition (SoC) might contribute to women's underrepresentation in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The latter could be underpinned by sex differences in social brain structure. This study investigated the relationship between structural social brain networks and SoC in females and males in relation to ASD and autistic traits in twins. We used a co-twin design in 77 twin pairs (39 female) aged 12.5 to 31.0 years. Twin pairs were discordant or concordant for ASD or autistic traits, discordant or concordant for other neurodevelopmental disorders or concordant for neurotypical development. They underwent structural magnetic resonance imaging and were assessed for SoC using the naturalistic Movie for the Assessment of Social Cognition. Autistic traits predicted reduced SoC capacities predominantly in male twins, despite a comparable extent of autistic traits in each sex, although the association between SoC and autistic traits did not differ significantly between the sexes. Consistently, within-pair associations between SoC and social brain structure revealed that lower SoC ability was associated with increased cortical thickness of several brain regions, particularly in males. Our findings confirm the notion that sex differences in SoC in association with ASD are underpinned by sex differences in brain structure.
女性在社会认知（SoC）方面具有优势，这可能导致女性在自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）中的代表性不足。后者可能是由于社会大脑结构存在性别差异。本研究调查了在双胞胎中，与 ASD 和自闭症特征相关的结构社会大脑网络与 SoC 之间在女性和男性中的关系。我们使用了 77 对双胞胎（39 名女性）的同卵双胞胎设计，年龄在 12.5 至 31.0 岁之间。双胞胎在 ASD 或自闭症特征方面存在不一致或一致，在其他神经发育障碍方面存在不一致或一致，在神经典型发育方面存在一致。他们接受了结构磁共振成像，并使用自然主义电影评估社会认知来评估 SoC。自闭症特征预测男性双胞胎的 SoC 能力降低，尽管每个性别都有相当程度的自闭症特征，但 SoC 和自闭症特征之间的关联在性别之间没有显著差异。一致的是，SoC 和社会大脑结构之间的个体内关联表明，较低的 SoC 能力与几个大脑区域的皮质厚度增加有关，尤其是在男性中。我们的研究结果证实了这样一种观点，即与 ASD 相关的 SoC 中的性别差异是由大脑结构中的性别差异所支撑的。
