Academic training selectively shapes the neural pathways mediating sex/gender differences in cognition

Sex and gender (S/G) differences in cognitive performance are well documented, yet how they relate to brain organization and interact with educational experience during early adulthood, a period of ongoing cognitive maturation, remains unclear. University training exposes young adults to distinct cognitive and social demands, providing a natural context to test whether brain functional connectivity (FC) mediates S/G cognitive differences in an education-dependent manner.

The cohort included students enrolled in declarative fields (formalized, context-independent knowledge, e.g., STEM, law, business administration, philosophy) or situated fields (knowledge embedded in social practice, e.g., psychology, education, medicine). Individual FC networks were derived using the GINNA atlas; edges significantly differing between S/G groups were identified and aggregated into sex-differential nodal FC indices (sdNFIs). Moderated mediation models tested whether academic training fields shape the contribution of these sdNFIs to S/G differences in cognitive performance. Additional exploratory analyses tested whether effects varied across academic stages by including study level as a second moderator.

Baseline S/G differences in cognitive performance and sdNFIs were preserved across academic training. Yet sdNFI-mediated pathways linking S/G to cognitive performance varied strongly by knowledge domain. In declarative fields, sdNFIs spanning parietal and medial temporal networks supported male advantages in visuospatial and arithmetic tasks. In situated fields, sdNFIs spanning medial prefrontal and temporo-parietal networks supported female advantages in socio-emotional and verbal tasks. Study-level analyses revealed distinct profiles of sdNFI mediation across tasks. sdNFI-mediated effects were observed primarily at later academic stages (Y2 +) for arithmetic fact retrieval, mental rotation, and emotion recognition, whereas they were present at Y1 but absent at later stages for verbal list learning.

These findings demonstrate that academic training selectively shapes FC-cognition relationships in a S/G-specific manner, with declarative and situated knowledge domains recruiting distinct, context-sensitive networks to support performance. By guiding the recruitment of functional networks to meet specific cognitive demands, higher education may constitute a formative period during which the brain architecture supporting S/G cognitive differences is dynamically reorganized. Plain English summary Men and women often differ in certain cognitive skills: women tend to perform better in tasks involving language and recognizing emotions, while men tend to show advantages in spatial reasoning and arithmetic. These differences are well established, but their origins, biological, environmental, or both, remain debated. In this study, we asked whether the type of university education a person follows influences how the brain supports these cognitive differences. We compared students enrolled in fields centered on formal knowledge, such as STEM, law, or philosophy, with students in fields where learning is deeply embedded in human interaction and social practice, such as psychology, education, or medicine. We found that men and women showed similar cognitive differences regardless of their field of study. However, the brain pathways supporting these differences varied depending on the type of training. In formal knowledge fields, brain connections in spatial and memory-related regions supported male advantages in arithmetic and visuospatial tasks. In socially oriented fields, brain connections in regions involved in language and social processing supported female advantages in verbal memory and emotion recognition. Examining these relationships across academic stages revealed different patterns: some brain-performance associations emerged with university training, whereas others faded after the first year, highlighting how flexibly the brain adapts to educational experience. These findings suggest that higher education does not eliminate cognitive differences between men and women, but shapes how these differences are reflected in the brain. Understanding how education interacts with brain development may help design learning environments that better support all students.