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@PHDTHESIS{Wiersch:1038525,
author = {Wiersch, Lisa},
title = {{M}ultivariate {S}tatistical {A}pproaches to investigate
{S}ex {D}ifferences in {B}rain and {C}ognition},
school = {HHU Düsseldorf},
type = {Dissertation},
reportid = {FZJ-2025-01510},
pages = {92},
year = {2024},
note = {Dissertation, HHU Düsseldorf, 2024},
abstract = {Decoding individual variability in cognition and brain
organization is essential to enhanceour understanding of
heterogeneity in the brain and behavior. Individual
variability is oftenrelated to specific demographic
phenotypes, with sex being a prominent phenotypecontributing
to individual variability. Examining how differences between
males andfemales are reflected in cognitive and neuroimaging
data advances the understanding of sexdifferences in
cognitive processing, brain organization, and the
heterogeneity ofneuropsychological and mental diseases. To
characterize common sources of variability suchas sex, the
present work aims to present multivariate statistical
methods as powerful tools toidentify patterns in complex
datasets such as neuroimaging or cognitive data
(commentary).By using multivariate statistical approaches,
the present work examines sex differences
inneuropsychological (study 1) and brain imaging data (study
2 $\&$ study 3). Specifically, study1 examined sex-specific
cognitive profiles derived from a battery of
neuropsychological testsusing structural equation modeling.
Studies 2 and 3 supplement this investigation byexamining
sex-related variability in the functional (study 2) and
structural (study 3) brainorganization using machine
learning (ML) approaches. Additionally,
methodologicalconsiderations in ML were taken into account
such as the influence of training samples onthe
generalization performance of ML models (study 2) and the
influence of confoundingvariables (study 3).The commentary
highlighted the importance of new methodological approaches
such asmultivariate statistical learning to enhance our
understanding of the complex nature of sexdifferences in
rich data. Study 1 identified sex-specific cognitive
profiles pertaining to sexdifferences in component solutions
in cognitive processing strategies. Results of study
2revealed sex differences in the functional brain
organization for some, but not all brainregions, with the
highest generalization performance when sex classification
models weretrained on a large and heterogeneous sample
comprising the data of multiple datasets. Study3
demonstrated sex differences in the structural brain
organization by accurately classifyingsex with ML models
that were debiased for the confounding influence of brain
size bymatching males and females for brain size. In sum,
the present studies demonstrated thatmultivariate
statistical approaches can effectively decode sex-related
variability in cognitiveas well as structural and functional
brain imaging data while incorporating
importantmethodological considerations.},
cin = {INM-7},
cid = {I:(DE-Juel1)INM-7-20090406},
pnm = {5251 - Multilevel Brain Organization and Variability
(POF4-525) / 5252 - Brain Dysfunction and Plasticity
(POF4-525)},
pid = {G:(DE-HGF)POF4-5251 / G:(DE-HGF)POF4-5252},
typ = {PUB:(DE-HGF)11},
doi = {10.34734/FZJ-2025-01510},
url = {https://juser.fz-juelich.de/record/1038525},
}