Sex differences in brain homotopic co-activations: a meta-analytic study

Abstract

An element of great interest in functional connectivity is ‘homotopic connectivity’ (HC), namely the connectivity between two mirrored areas of the two hemispheres, mainly mediated by the fibers of the corpus callosum. Despite a long tradition of studying sexual dimorphism in the human brain, to our knowledge only one study has addressed the influence of sex on HC.We investigated the issue of homotopic co-activations in women and men using a coordinate-based meta-analytic method and data from the BrainMap database. A first unexpected observation was that the database was affected by a sex bias: women-only groups are investigated less often than men-only ones, and they are more often studied in certain domains such as emotion compared to men, and less in cognition. Implementing a series of sampling procedures to equalize the size and proportion of the datasets, our results indicated that females exhibit stronger interhemispheric co-activation than males, suggesting that the female brain is less lateralized and more integrated than that of males. In addition, males appear to show less intense but more extensive co-activation than females. Some local differences also appeared. In particular, it appears that primary motor and perceptual areas are more co-activated in males, in contrast to the opposite trend in the rest of the brain. This argues for a multidimensional view of sex brain differences and suggests that the issue should be approached with more complex models than previously thought.

Females exhibit smaller volumes of brain activation and lower inter-subject variability during motor tasks

“…In that, neural efficiency can be thought of as a process where lower neural resources are needed to achieve a given behavioural or cognitive output. Several sex differences in brain activation have been observed with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) across a range of tasks and resting-state brain activity 12 , 27 – 29 . However, to date, little work has considered whether sex differences affect whole brain activation associated with movements of various body parts.…”

The interplay of spiritual health, resilience, and happiness: an evaluation among a group of dental students at a state university in Turkey

“…Men and women exhibit differences not only in biological aspects but also in brain activity, gender-specific cognitive and behavioral styles, as well as susceptibility to diseases and disorders [ 32 , 33 ]. Research on gender disparities underscores the importance of considering both genetic/hormonal and social influences [ 34 ].…”

Uncovering the links between physical activity and prosocial behaviour: A functional near-infrared spectroscopy hyperscanning study on brain connectivity and synchrony

“…It is recognised that there are age and sex differences in the impact of various forms of physical activity on cognitive control, 17 prosocial behaviour during the trust game, 67,68 and intra-brain functional connectivity. 69 Considering that this study represents an initial exploration of the correlation between physical activity, prosocial behaviour, intra-brain functional connectivity, and inter-brain synchrony, male participants were chosen exclusively to minimise any potential confounding associations. Eligible participants were required to be free from a history of orthopaedic, cardiovascular, endocrine-metabolic, or visual impairment, mental illness, or other diseases.…”