Gender-Related and Hemispheric Effects in Cortical Thickness-Based Hemispheric Brain Morphological Network

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Brain Imaging
• Network Science

Background:

• Brain structure exhibits hemispheric asymmetries.
• Understanding gender-related differences in these asymmetries is crucial for neuroscience.
• Cortical thickness covariance networks offer a novel approach to study brain morphology.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate gender-specific differences in graph metrics of hemispheric morphological networks.
• To analyze asymmetries in global and local graph metrics across different brain regions.

Main Methods:

• Utilized T1-weighted MRI scans from 285 Human Connectome Project participants (150 females, 135 males).
• Constructed hemispheric morphological networks based on cortical thickness similarity (Jensen-Shannon divergence).
• Calculated global and local graph metrics and derived asymmetry indexes across network sparsity levels (K = 0.10-0.36).

Main Results:

• Hemispheric morphological networks demonstrated small-worldness and global efficiency.
• Significant gender differences were found in the directionality of asymmetries for global metrics (normalized clustering coefficient, characteristic path length, global efficiency).
• Specific regions like the cingulate, superior parietal gyrus, temporal pole, and rectal gyrus showed distinct asymmetric patterns between males and females.

Conclusions:

• Interhemispheric asymmetry patterns in cortical thickness distribution differ between genders.
• These findings highlight the importance of considering gender-by-hemispheric interactions in brain morphology studies.
• Future research should incorporate these gender-specific network differences in structural covariance network analyses.