Gender differences in cortical morphological networks


Nebli A., Rekık I.

BRAIN IMAGING AND BEHAVIOR, cilt.14, sa.5, ss.1831-1839, 2020 (SCI-Expanded) identifier identifier identifier

  • Yayın Türü: Makale / Tam Makale
  • Cilt numarası: 14 Sayı: 5
  • Basım Tarihi: 2020
  • Doi Numarası: 10.1007/s11682-019-00123-6
  • Dergi Adı: BRAIN IMAGING AND BEHAVIOR
  • Derginin Tarandığı İndeksler: Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED), Scopus, Agricultural & Environmental Science Database, Biotechnology Research Abstracts, CINAHL, EMBASE, MEDLINE, Psycinfo
  • Sayfa Sayıları: ss.1831-1839
  • İstanbul Teknik Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet

Özet

Cortical morphological networks (CMN), where each network models the relationship in morphology between different cortical brain regions quantified using a specific measurement (e.g., cortical thickness), have not been investigated with respect to gender differences in the human brain. Cortical processes are expected to involve complex interactions between different brain regions, univariate methods thus might overlook informative gender markers. Hence, by leveraging machine learning techniques with the potential to highlight multivariate interacting effects, we found that the most discriminative CMN connections between males and females were derived from the left hemisphere using the mean sulcal depth as measurement. However, for both left and right hemispheres, the first most discriminative morphological connection revealed across all cortical attributes involved (entorhinal cortex <-> caudal anterior cingulate cortex) and (entorhinal cortex <-> transverse temporal cortex) respectively, which gives us new insights into behavioral gender differences from an omics perspective and might explain why males and females learn differently.