Gender-based functional connectivity differences in brain networks in childhood

Understanding the effect of gender differences on the brain can provide important information to characterize normal changes throughout life and to increase the likelihood of sex-specific approaches for neurological and psychiatric diseases. In this study, Functional Connectivity (FC), Amplitude of Low-Frequency Fluctuations (ALFF) and fractional ALFF (fALFF) analyzes will be compared between female and male brains between the ages of 7 and 18 years using resting state-functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI).

The rs-fMRI data in this study has been provided by The New York University (NYU) Child Study Center of the publicly shared ADHD200 database. From the NYU dataset, 68 (34 females, 34 males) healthy subjects in the age range of 7-18 years were selected. The female group (mean age: 12.3271±3.1380) and male group (mean age: 11.8766±2.9697) consisted of right-handed, small head motion and similar IQ values. FC was obtained by seed voxel analysis and the effect of low-frequency fluctuations on gender was examined by ALFF and fALFF analyses. Two-sample t-test was used to compare female and male groups with the significance thresholds set to FDR-corrected p<0.05.

In the results of our study, both in the ALFF, fALFF analyses and the seed regions belonging to many network regions, higher FC rates were found in girls than boys. Our results show that the females' language functions, visual functions such as object detection and recognition, working memory, executive functions, and episodic memory are more developed than males in this age range. In addition, as another result of our study, the seed regions are statistically stronger where the higher activation of female participants than male participants has concentrated in the left hemisphere.

Gender differences in brain networks should be taken into consideration when examining childhood cognitive and neuropsychiatric disorders and the results should also be evaluated according to gender. Evaluation of gender differences in childhood can increase the likelihood of early and definitive diagnosis and correct treatment for neurological diseases and can help doctors and scientists find new diagnostic tools to discover brain differences.