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@INPROCEEDINGS{Weis:863319,
author = {Weis, Susanne and Patil, Kaustubh and Hoffstaedter, Felix
and Eickhoff, Simon},
title = {{R}egional brain connectivity patterns distinguish males
from females},
reportid = {FZJ-2019-03399},
year = {2019},
abstract = {A large amount of research has suggested sex differences in
functional brain organization (Cahill, 2006). The present
study aimed to elucidate the brain basis of these
differences by showing that the connectivity patterns of
specific brain regions during resting state are sufficiently
distinct to facilitate sex classification with high
accuracy. When assessing classification accuracies
separately for males and females, relatively lower
accuracies in one sex as opposed to the other imply more
varied connectivity patterns across that sex group, which
makes classification difficult for that sex. Similarly,
higher accuracy for one sex can be taken to imply a more
typical connectivity pattern within that sex. Thus, by
comparing sex-specific accuracies in classification based on
regionally specific connectivity patterns, we aimed to
identify key brain regions that underlie sex differences in
functional brain organization. A sample comprising 744
subjects (372 male, age range: 22-37, mean age: 28.5 years)
was constructed from the data provided by the Human
Connectome Project (HCP S1200 release, (Van Essen, 2012)).
Males and females were matched for age, twin-status and
education. The FIX-Denoised fMRI dataset comprised 1200
functional volumes in MNI space per subject in a resting
state (Siemens Skyra 3T scanner, TR=720ms) (Salimi-Khorshidi
et al., 2014)). Individual resting state connectomes were
created based on 400 ROIs from the Schaefer whole-cortex
parcellation (Schaefer, 2017) in combination with 36
subcortical parcels from the Brainnetome atlas (Fan et al.,
2016). For each of the 436 parcels individually,
connectivity patterns with all other brain parcels were
employed as features for non-linear SVM analyses (Chang $\&$
Lin, 2011) to train individual models for classification of
the subject’s sex from their spatially specific
connectome. Classification accuracies, determined using
10-fold cross-validation, were computed individually for
each parcel. Then, for each parcel, accuracies for males and
females were computed as the number of correctly classified
males / females divided by the total number of males /
females. For all brain parcels, classification accuracies
for males (mAcc) and females (fAcc) were above chance (range
mAcc = $(65.0\%:$ $79.0\%),$ fAcc = $(61.7\%,82.1\%)).$
Averaged across all parcels, accuracies did not differ
significantly between the sexes (mean mAcc: $72.8\%,$ S.D.
$2.5\%;$ mean fACC: $73.1\%,$ S.D. $3.5\%;$ t = 1.26; p >
0.05). Regions displaying significantly higher
classification accuracies (χ2(1) > 7.75, p < 0.005) for
males compared to females were located in bilateral pre- and
postcentral gyri and the right occipital lobe.
Meta-analytical characterization (Fox et al., 2014) of these
regions associated them with language functions and speech
execution. Significantly higher accuracy for females was
identified in one parcel in right superior and medial
orbital gyrus, which was associated with emotional
processing of reward. Across most parts of the brain,
classification was achieved with similar accuracies for
males and females, indicating that, for most brain regions,
connectivity patterns are both typical within sex and
distinctive enough to enable successful sex classification.
However, in a specific subset of regions which were
associated with speech and language functions,
classification accuracies were significantly lower for
females, indicating a more varied connectivity pattern in
comparison with males. More complex connectivity patterns
for language related areas in females might indicate a
larger variety of cognitive strategies, which, in turn,
might form the basis for the female advantage in verbal
processing that has repeatedly been shown in behavior and
functional brain activation studies (Clements et al., 2006).
On the other hand, areas associated with emotional
processing of reward appear to show a more typical
connectivity pattern in females, which might go along with
more efficient emotion regulation strategies in females
(McRae et al., 2008).Cahill, L. Why sex matters for
neuroscience. Nat Rev Neurosci. 2006 Jun;7(6):pp 477-84.Van
Essen, D.C. (2012), ‘The Human Connectome Project: a data
acquisition perspective’, NeuroImage, 62, pp.
2222-2231.Salimi-Khorshidi, G, Douaud, G., Beckmann, C.F.,
Glasser, M.F., Griffanti, L., Smith S.M. (2014),
‘Automatic denoising of functional MRI data: Combining
independent component analysis and hierarchical fusion of
classifiers’, NeuroImage, 90, pp. 449-468. Schaefer, A.
(2017), ‘Local-Global Parcellation of the Human Cerebral
Cortex from Intrinsic Functional Connectivity MRI’,
Cerebral Cortex, 18, pp. 1-20.Fan, L., Li, H., Zhuo, J.,
Zhang, Y., Wang, J., Chen, L., Yang, Z., Chu, C., Xie, S.,
Laird, A.R., Fox, P.T., Eickhoff, S.B., Yu, C., Jiang, T.
(2016). The Human Brainnetome Atlas: A New Brain Atlas Based
on Connectional Architecture. Cereb Cortex, 26(8), pp.
3508-3526.Chang , C.C., Lin, C.J. (2011), ‘LIBSVM : a
library for support vector machines’, ACM Transactions on
Intelligent Systems and Technology, 2, 27, pp. 1-27.Fox, P.
T., Lancaster, J. L., Laird, A. R., $\&$ Eickhoff, S. B.
(2014). Meta-analysis in human neuroimaging: computational
modeling of large-scale databases. Annu Rev Neurosci, 37,
409-434. doi:10.1146/annurev-neuro-062012-170320.Clements,
A. M., Rimrodt, S. L., Abel, J. R., Blankner, J. G.,
Mostofsky, S. H., Pekar, J. J., Denckla, M.B., Cutting, L.
E. (2006).Sex differences in cerebral laterality of language
and visuospatial processing. Brain Lang, 98(2), pp
150-158.McRae, K., Ochsner, K.N., Mauss, I.B., Gabrieli,
J.J.D., Gross, J.J. (2008). Gender Differences in Emotion
Regulation: An fMRI Study of Cognitive Reappraisal.Process
Intergroup Relat. 2008 Apr;11(2):143-162.},
month = {Jun},
date = {2019-06-09},
organization = {2019 Annual Meeting of the
Organization of Human Brain Mapping,
Rom (Italy), 9 Jun 2019 - 13 Jun 2019},
subtyp = {Other},
cin = {INM-7},
cid = {I:(DE-Juel1)INM-7-20090406},
pnm = {571 - Connectivity and Activity (POF3-571)},
pid = {G:(DE-HGF)POF3-571},
typ = {PUB:(DE-HGF)24},
url = {https://juser.fz-juelich.de/record/863319},
}