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The Human Brain Is Best Described as Being on a Female/Male Continuum: Evidence from a Neuroimaging Connectivity Study.

ABSTRACT: Psychological androgyny has long been associated with greater cognitive flexibility, adaptive behavior, and better mental health, but whether a similar concept can be defined using neural features remains unknown. Using the neuroimaging data from 9620 participants, we found that global functional connectivity was stronger in the male brain before middle age but became weaker after that, when compared with the female brain, after systematic testing of potentially confounding effects. We defined a brain gender continuum by estimating the likelihood of an observed functional connectivity matrix to represent a male brain. We found that participants mapped at the center of this continuum had fewer internalizing symptoms compared with those at the 2 extreme ends. These findings suggest a novel hypothesis proposing that there exists a neuroimaging concept of androgyny using the brain gender continuum, which may be associated with better mental health in a similar way to psychological androgyny.

SUBMITTER: Zhang Y

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8107794 | biostudies-literature | 2021 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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The Human Brain Is Best Described as Being on a Female/Male Continuum: Evidence from a Neuroimaging Connectivity Study.

Zhang Yi Y Luo Qiang Q Huang Chu-Chung CC Lo Chun-Yi Zac CZ Langley Christelle C Desrivières Sylvane S Quinlan Erin Burke EB Banaschewski Tobias T Millenet Sabina S Bokde Arun L W ALW Flor Herta H Garavan Hugh H Gowland Penny P Heinz Andreas A Ittermann Bernd B Martinot Jean-Luc JL Artiges Eric E Paillère-Martinot Marie-Laure ML Nees Frauke F Orfanos Dimitri Papadopoulos DP Poustka Luise L Fröhner Juliane H JH Smolka Michael N MN Walter Henrik H Whelan Robert R Tsai Shih-Jen SJ Lin Ching-Po CP Bullmore Ed E Schumann Gunter G Sahakian Barbara J BJ Feng Jianfeng J

Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) 20210501 6

Psychological androgyny has long been associated with greater cognitive flexibility, adaptive behavior, and better mental health, but whether a similar concept can be defined using neural features remains unknown. Using the neuroimaging data from 9620 participants, we found that global functional connectivity was stronger in the male brain before middle age but became weaker after that, when compared with the female brain, after systematic testing of potentially confounding effects. We defined a ...[more]

PMID: 33471126

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Project description:IntroductionDietary interventions such as caloric restriction (CR) exert positive effects on brain health. Unfortunately, poor compliance hinders the success of this approach. A proposed alternative is resveratrol (Rsv), a CR-mimetic known to promote brain health. Direct comparison between the effects of Rsv and CR on brain health is lacking, with limited knowledge on their sex-specific effects. Therefore, we aimed to compare and unravel the sex-specific impact of these dietary interventions on spontaneous brain activity.MethodsHere, we used resting-state fMRI to investigate functional connectivity (FC) changes in five prominent resting-state brain networks (RSNs) in healthy 4 month old male and female F344 rats supplemented to either 40% CR or daily Rsv supplementation (10 mg/kg, oral) for the duration of 1 month.ResultsOur results demonstrated a decreased body weight (BW) in CR rats, as well as an increase in body weight in male Rsv supplemented rats, compared to female Rsv supplemented rats, whereas this difference between sexes was not observed in the control or CR groups. Furthermore, we found that both CR or Rsv supplementation induce a female-specific decrease of FC between the subcortical network and hippocampal network, and between the subcortical network and lateral cortical network. Moreover, Rsv supplementation lowered FC within the hippocampal network and between the hippocampal and the default mode like network, the lateral cortical network and the sensory network-an effect not observed for the CR rats.DiscussionOur findings reveal that both CR and Rsv induce a similar female-specific decrease of FC in RSNs associated with memory and emotion, all the while CR and Rsv induce dissimilar changes in body weight and other within- and between-RSN FC measures. Altogether, this study provides insight into the effects and comparability of short-term CR and Rsv supplementation on brain connectivity within- and between-RSNs in both male and female F344 rats, providing a FC reference for future research of dietary effects.

Dataset Information

The Human Brain Is Best Described as Being on a Female/Male Continuum: Evidence from a Neuroimaging Connectivity Study.

Publications

The Human Brain Is Best Described as Being on a Female/Male Continuum: Evidence from a Neuroimaging Connectivity Study.

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