Department of Radiology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Anhui Medical University, Hefei 230022, China; Research Center of Clinical Medical Imaging, Anhui Province, Hefei 230032, China; Anhui Provincial Institute of Translational Medicine, Hefei 230032, China.
Department of Radiology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Anhui Medical University, Hefei 230022, China; Research Center of Clinical Medical Imaging, Anhui Province, Hefei 230032, China; Anhui Provincial Institute of Translational Medicine, Hefei 230032, China.
Neuroimage. 2023 Dec 1;283:120415. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2023.120415. Epub 2023 Oct 19.
Previous literature has established the presence of sex differences in behavioral inhibition as well as its neural substrates and related disease risk. However, there is limited evidence that speaks directly to the question of whether or not there are sex-dependent associations between behavioral inhibition and resting-state brain function and, if so, how they are modulated by the underlying molecular mechanisms. We computed functional connectivity density (FCD) using resting-state functional MRI data to examine their associations with behavioral inhibition ability measured using a Go/No-Go task across a large cohort of 510 healthy young adults. Then, we examined the spatial relationships of the FCD correlates of behavioral inhibition with gene expression and neurotransmitter atlases to explore their potential genetic architecture and neurochemical basis. A significant negative correlation between behavioral inhibition and FCD in the left superior parietal lobule was found in females but not males. Further spatial correlation analyses demonstrated that the identified neural correlates of behavioral inhibition were associated with expression of gene categories predominantly implicating essential components of the cerebral cortex (glial cell, neuron, axon, dendrite, and synapse) and ion channel activity, as well as were linked to the serotonergic system. Our findings may not only yield important insights into the molecular mechanisms underlying the female-specific neural substrates of behavioral inhibition, but also provide a critical context for understanding how biological sex might contribute to variation in behavioral inhibition and its related disease risk.
先前的文献已经证实了行为抑制在行为、神经基础及其相关疾病风险方面存在性别差异。然而，直接探讨行为抑制与静息态大脑功能之间是否存在性别依赖关系的证据有限，也不清楚这些关系是如何受到潜在分子机制调节的。我们使用静息态功能磁共振成像数据来计算功能连接密度（FCD），以在一个包含 510 名健康年轻成年人的大样本中，研究行为抑制能力与 FCD 之间的关联，该行为抑制能力是使用 Go/No-Go 任务来衡量的。然后，我们检查了行为抑制 FCD 相关物与基因表达和神经递质图谱之间的空间关系，以探索它们潜在的遗传结构和神经化学基础。在女性中发现了行为抑制与左顶叶上回 FCD 之间的显著负相关，而在男性中则没有。进一步的空间相关分析表明，行为抑制的鉴定神经相关性与主要涉及大脑皮层（神经胶质细胞、神经元、轴突、树突和突触）和离子通道活性的基因类别表达以及与 5-羟色胺能系统有关。我们的研究结果不仅可能深入了解行为抑制的女性特异性神经基础的分子机制，还为理解生物学性别如何影响行为抑制及其相关疾病风险提供了重要的背景。
