Chen Wenyu, Zhan Ling, Jia Tao
College of Computer and Information Science, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, China.
Entropy (Basel). 2024 Oct 14;26(10):864. doi: 10.3390/e26100864.
Existing studies have demonstrated significant sex differences in the neural mechanisms of daily life and neuropsychiatric disorders. The hierarchical organization of the functional brain network is a critical feature for assessing these neural mechanisms. But the sex differences in hierarchical organization have not been fully investigated. Here, we explore whether the hierarchical structure of the brain network differs between females and males using resting-state fMRI data. We measure the hierarchical entropy and the maximum modularity of each individual, and identify a significant negative correlation between the complexity of hierarchy and modularity in brain networks. At the mean level, females show higher modularity, whereas males exhibit a more complex hierarchy. At the consensus level, we use a co-classification matrix to perform a detailed investigation of the differences in the hierarchical organization between sexes and observe that the female group and the male group exhibit different interaction patterns of brain regions in the dorsal attention network (DAN) and visual network (VIN). Our findings suggest that the brains of females and males employ different network topologies to carry out brain functions. In addition, the negative correlation between hierarchy and modularity implies a need to balance the complexity in the hierarchical organization of the brain network, which sheds light on future studies of brain functions.
现有研究表明，在日常生活和神经精神疾病的神经机制方面存在显著的性别差异。功能性脑网络的层次组织是评估这些神经机制的关键特征。但层次组织中的性别差异尚未得到充分研究。在此，我们使用静息态功能磁共振成像数据探讨女性和男性之间脑网络的层次结构是否存在差异。我们测量了每个个体的层次熵和最大模块化程度，并确定脑网络中层次复杂性与模块化程度之间存在显著的负相关。在平均水平上，女性表现出更高的模块化程度，而男性则呈现出更复杂的层次结构。在共识水平上，我们使用共分类矩阵对两性之间层次组织的差异进行详细研究，观察到女性组和男性组在背侧注意网络（DAN）和视觉网络（VIN）中表现出不同的脑区交互模式。我们的研究结果表明，女性和男性的大脑采用不同的网络拓扑结构来执行脑功能。此外，层次结构与模块化程度之间的负相关意味着需要平衡脑网络层次组织中的复杂性，这为未来的脑功能研究提供了启示。
