Sex differences in the connectome of the human brain according to an MR-tractography study

Abstract

Background: The gender differences in the brain anatomy play an important role in planning and analysis in a lot of studies of the brain. Despite most animal studies being performed on the animals of only one sex, clinical studies generally enroll both males and females. Keeping this fact in mind, learning the gender differences in the white matter structure is important for those studies which deal with the white matter changes. These differences should be considered on the stages of planning and evaluation of the results. Aims: Evaluation of the gender differences in the white matter pathways in healthy subjects. Methods: 21 women and 20 men were enrolled in the study. All the subjects underwent MR-tractography, then the anatomic connectome was composed and the differences were evaluated using the tracts quantitative anisotropy (QA) evaluation. Results: The gender differences were found in the white matter pathways with the prevalence of quantitative anisotropy in women, observed in a larger number of tracts than in those of men. QA was prevalent in a lot of fascicli that form major pathways in both groups: corpus callosum, dominant arcuate fasciclus, inferior fronto-occipital, inferior and superior right longitudinal pathways. Conclusions: The white matter pathways in males and females are different not only within the major tracts but also for small fascicli that form tracts.

Keywords

• connectome
• healthy volunteers
• sex characteristics
• mr-tractography