Exploration of Sex Differences in the Brain based on Structure and fMRI Techniques

Abstract

There are significant differences in the physiological structure and function of male and female human brains. Sex-related changes in human brain structure have been widely discussed in many studies, and the research results are inconsistent. This paper mainly uses Voxel-Based Morophometry (VBM) and Functional Connectivity (FC) methods. The MRI data images of 5 healthy men and 5 healthy women from USTC were processed and analyzed. Format conversion, origin correction, segmentation, smoothing, statistical difference analysis and other processing steps were carried out successively to find the different brain regions of different genders. Secondly, the functional image data was preprocessed, and Regions of Interest (ROI) were extracted from the differential brain regions sought by VBM to make functional connections, and then statistical analysis was carried out to obtain the difference map. There are two resting state functional connectivity networks in the prefrontal cortex: one is related to aPFC and DLPFC; The other is related to language areas (including IFG and STG). Studies have shown that there are significant differences in the structure and function of the human brain between the sexes, with the medial frontal cortex larger in males and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex larger in females. In the whole measured cortex, especially in the aPFC+DLPFC region, males show stronger spontaneous wave power than females. Men also showed stronger intra-network connections in the aPFC+DLPFC region. In contrast, women showed stronger internetwork connections between the language area and the aPFC+DLPFC area. In addition, gender differences were shown in both the spatial distribution of spontaneous fluctuation power and the functional connectivity of resting states.