Imaging Study On Gender Difference In The Brain Of Structure And Function

Similarities and differences of between men and women has been a hot topic that people want to focus and research on, meanwhile the study of gender differences is also a continuing research in the field of social and cognitive sciences. Many existing studies have shown that there is a very great relationship between people's cognition and behavior and our brains. In this paper, by using the modern neuroimaging techniques, we are able to explore gender differences that may exist in the brain structure and its correlation with some functional network by analyzing diffusion tensor imaging and resting state f MRI data of 71 healthy subjects.Firstly, we used TBSS method to analyze sex differences in the brain structure at regional level.Then, we used graph theory that its topological properties mainly based on Rich Club organization to analyse gender differences at global level.Finally,we took two structural index of brain network above:FA and NOS to correlate with the functional connectivity in five functinal network.From analysis of the TBSS method,we found the results:there were no areas that exist higher FA value in female. However, there were areas of high FA value in men,including the right medial lemniscus,genu of corpus callosum and splenium of corpus callosum,which may inferred that male had advantage in the development of motor coordination and proprioception,and greater efficiency in the interhemispheric cooperation of lateralized functions.From analysis of the Rich Club organization,we found the results:The brain networks of both females and males showed prominent architecture of “rich-club” organization. Added analysis revealed no difference in rich club connections in men and women but a more feeder connections in women. In addition, we demonstrated a greater global efficiency in males in the small-worldness property and global efficiency may be attributed to the interaction of rich club and feeder connections due to its positive relationship with rich club edges and its negative correlation with feeder edges. Furthermore, we found intrinsic superiority of coordinated action and attention in males and the significant SC-FC coupling in the resting-state f MRI networks of some cognitivefunctional systems: rich club connections in motor and attention, and local connections in visual, which present in males but absent in females. Our findings further prove the existence of sex dimorphism in brain structures that may underlie gender difference in behavior and cognitive functions.From analysis of the correlation between structural connectivity and functinal connectivity: For the relationship between FA and FC,significant effects of negative were found in the female network of attention and visual system but non-found in male.However,both men and women lost the correlation in the network of sensormotor,default-mode and frontal. For the relationship between NOS and FC,we found no significant relationship in these functional network.Therefore,the findings show the relationship between the white matter structure and functional system of attention and visual in female.