Shanghai Centre for Mathematical Sciences, Fudan University, Shanghai, 200433, China.
Institute of Science and Technology for Brain-Inspired Intelligence, Ministry of Education-Key Laboratory of Computational Neuroscience and Brain-Inspired Intelligence and Research and Research Institute of Intelligent Complex Systems, Fudan University, Shanghai, 200433, China.
Cereb Cortex. 2021 May 10;31(6):3021-3033. doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhaa408.
Psychological androgyny has long been associated with greater cognitive flexibility, adaptive behavior, and better mental health, but whether a similar concept can be defined using neural features remains unknown. Using the neuroimaging data from 9620 participants, we found that global functional connectivity was stronger in the male brain before middle age but became weaker after that, when compared with the female brain, after systematic testing of potentially confounding effects. We defined a brain gender continuum by estimating the likelihood of an observed functional connectivity matrix to represent a male brain. We found that participants mapped at the center of this continuum had fewer internalizing symptoms compared with those at the 2 extreme ends. These findings suggest a novel hypothesis proposing that there exists a neuroimaging concept of androgyny using the brain gender continuum, which may be associated with better mental health in a similar way to psychological androgyny.
心理性别二分一直以来都与更高的认知灵活性、适应性行为和更好的心理健康相关，但是否可以使用神经特征来定义类似的概念尚不清楚。我们使用来自 9620 名参与者的神经影像学数据发现，在中年之前，与女性大脑相比，男性大脑的全局功能连接更强，但在中年之后则变弱，这是在系统测试潜在混杂效应之后得出的结果。我们通过估计观察到的功能连接矩阵代表男性大脑的可能性来定义大脑性别连续体。我们发现，与处于两个极端的参与者相比，处于这个连续体中心的参与者的内化症状较少。这些发现提出了一个新的假设，即使用大脑性别连续体存在一个神经影像学概念的性别二分，它可能以与心理性别二分相似的方式与更好的心理健康相关。
