TITLE:
Sex Differences in Reconstructed Resting-State Functional Brain Networks for Children
AUTHORS:
Xianglai Yang, Han Zhang
KEYWORDS:
Sex Difference, Functional Connectivity, Brain Network, fMRI
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Biosciences and Medicines,
Vol.8 No.12,
December
28,
2020
ABSTRACT: Neuroscience studies have demonstrated that functional differences in human brains between males and females might result in their cognitive and psychological distinctions. To investigate sex differences in resting-state functional networks for children, the functional brain networks of two groups including boys and girls were reconstructed by functional connectivity with significant between-group differences respectively based on two brain atlases, and then the reconstructed functional networks were compared from the viewpoint of small-world properties. The functional brain networks of the two groups both displayed topological properties of the small-world network based on different brain atlases but exhibited some sex differences in certain measures. Specifically, for the automated anatomical labeling atlas, compared with girls, boys showed stronger small-world properties and higher ability of local information processing in brain networks; for the Harvard Oxford Atlas, the shortest path length of boys increased, indicating poorer performance in both global information transmission and resistance to the random attack.