scispace - formally typeset
Journal ArticleDOI

Brain Connectivity: Gender Makes a Difference

Reads0
Chats0
TLDR
The literature provides convergent evidence for a substantial gender difference in brain connectivity within the human brain that possibly underlies gender-related cognitive differences and should be mandatory to take gender into account when designing experiments or interpreting results of brain connectivity/network in health and disease.
Abstract
It has been well known that gender plays a critical role in the anatomy and function of the human brain, as well as human behaviors. Recent neuroimaging studies have demonstrated gender effects on not only focal brain areas but also the connectivity between areas. Specifically, structural MRI and diffusion MRI data have revealed substantial gender differences in white matter-based anatomical connectivity. Structural MRI data further demonstrated gender differences in the connectivity revealed by morphometric correlation among brain areas. Functional connectivity derived from functional neuroimaging (e.g., functional MRI and PET) data is also modulated by gender. Moreover, male and female human brains display differences in the network topology that represents the organizational patterns of brain connectivity across the entire brain. In this review, the authors summarize recent findings in the multimodal brain connectivity/network research with gender, focusing on large-scale data sets derived from modern neuroimaging techniques. The literature provides convergent evidence for a substantial gender difference in brain connectivity within the human brain that possibly underlies gender-related cognitive differences. Therefore, it should be mandatory to take gender into account when designing experiments or interpreting results of brain connectivity/network in health and disease. Future studies will likely be conducted to explore the interdependence between gender-related brain connectivity/network and the gender-specific nature of brain diseases as well as to investigate gender-related characteristics of multimodal brain connectivity/network in the normal brain.

read more

Citations
More filters

Data-driven methods for characterizing individual differences in brain MRI

Kuldeep Kumar
TL;DR: The segmentation approaches presented in the thesis provide a flexible and efficient way to analyze 3D curves like tractography streamlines, and is suitable for large-scale analyses of structural connectivity.
Journal ArticleDOI

Cognition Without Neural Representation: Dynamics of a Complex System

TL;DR: The paper offers a dynamical account of neurocognitive activity with Dynamical Causal Modelling (DCM) that combines dynamical systems theory (DST) mathematical formalisms with the theoretical contextualisation provided by Embodied and Enactive Cognitive Science (EECS).
Journal ArticleDOI

Reduced dream-recall frequency in left-handed adolescents: A replication

TL;DR: Right-handedness and mixed/inconsistent handedness were associated with higher dream-recall frequency compared to that of left-handed persons, again especially in adolescents compared with children, and further research is required to uncover the reason for the lower frequency of dream recall by left-handers.
Journal ArticleDOI

Sex dimorphism in a mediatory role of the posterior midcingulate cortex in the association between anxiety and pain sensitivity.

TL;DR: It is suggested that sexual dimorphism in anxiety-related brain activity may explain the differences found in CHEPs and the sex-related association between anxiety and pain.
References
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI

Collective dynamics of small-world networks

TL;DR: Simple models of networks that can be tuned through this middle ground: regular networks ‘rewired’ to introduce increasing amounts of disorder are explored, finding that these systems can be highly clustered, like regular lattices, yet have small characteristic path lengths, like random graphs.
Journal ArticleDOI

Complex brain networks: graph theoretical analysis of structural and functional systems

TL;DR: This article reviews studies investigating complex brain networks in diverse experimental modalities and provides an accessible introduction to the basic principles of graph theory and highlights the technical challenges and key questions to be addressed by future developments in this rapidly moving field.
Journal ArticleDOI

Complex networks: Structure and dynamics

TL;DR: The major concepts and results recently achieved in the study of the structure and dynamics of complex networks are reviewed, and the relevant applications of these ideas in many different disciplines are summarized, ranging from nonlinear science to biology, from statistical mechanics to medicine and engineering.
Journal ArticleDOI

Spontaneous fluctuations in brain activity observed with functional magnetic resonance imaging.

TL;DR: Recent studies examining spontaneous fluctuations in the blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) signal of functional magnetic resonance imaging as a potentially important and revealing manifestation of spontaneous neuronal activity are reviewed.
Journal ArticleDOI

MR diffusion tensor spectroscopy and imaging.

TL;DR: Once Deff is estimated from a series of NMR pulsed-gradient, spin-echo experiments, a tissue's three orthotropic axes can be determined and the effective diffusivities along these orthotropic directions are the eigenvalues of Deff.
Related Papers (5)

Toward discovery science of human brain function

Bharat B. Biswal, +54 more