Skip to main content

A large-scale study on the effects of sex on gray matter asymmetry

Brain Structure and Function volume 223, pages 183–193 (2018)Cite this article

Abstract

Research on sex-related brain asymmetries has not yielded consistent results. Despite its importance to further understanding of normal brain development and mental disorders, the field remains relatively unexplored. Here we employ a recently developed asymmetry measure, based on the Dice coefficient, to detect sex-related gray matter asymmetries in a sample of 457 healthy participants (266 men and 191 women) obtained from 5 independent databases. Results show that women’s brains are more globally symmetric than men’s (p < 0.001). Although the new measure accounts for asymmetries distributed all over the brain, several specific structures were identified as systematically more symmetric in women, such as the thalamus and the cerebellum, among other structures, some of which are typically involved in language production. These sex-related asymmetry differences may be defined at the neurodevelopmental stage and could be associated with functional and cognitive sex differences, as well as with proneness to develop a mental disorder.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution.

Access options

Buy single article

Instant access to the full article PDF.

USD 39.95

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3

References

Download references

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by a Miguel Servet contract (CP09/00292) and grants PI10/02479 and PI14/00047 from the Instituto de Salud Carlos III—Subdirección General de Evaluación y Fomento de la Investigación Sanitaria—co-funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF)—to GB, and contract PTA2011-4983-I from the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación, Spain to CS-O. We thank both openfmri.org and schizconnect.org projects for hosting the data and for making them publicly available. Data collection and sharing for the schizconnect.org project was funded by NIMH cooperative agreement 1U01 MH097435. Part of these data were downloaded from the COllaborative Informatics and Neuroimaging Suite Data Exchange tool (COINS; http://coins.mrn.org/dx) and this data collection was performed at the Mind Research Network, and funded by a Center of Biomedical Research Excellence (COBRE) Grant 5P20RR021938/P20GM103472 from the NIH to Dr. Vince Calhoun. Other parts of these data were obtained from the NU Schizophrenia Data and Software Tool (NUSDAST) database (http://central.xnat.org/REST/projects/NUDataSharing); data collection and sharing for this project was funded by NIMH grant 1R01 MH084803. The last part of the data from schizconnect.org used in this work was collected and shared by [University of Iowa, University of Minnesota, University of New Mexico, Massachusetts General Hospital] the Mind Research Network supported by the Department of Energy under Award Number DE-FG02-08ER64581.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Parc Sanitari Sant Joan de Déu, Sant Boi de Llobregat, Barcelona, Spain

    Christian Núñez, Maria Rosa Cambra, Judith Usall, Christian Stephan-Otto & Gildas Brébion

  2. Section of General Linguistics, Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain

    Constantina Theofanopoulou

  3. Universitat de Barcelona Institute for Complex Systems, Barcelona, Spain

    Constantina Theofanopoulou

  4. School of Life and Health Sciences, Aston University, Birmingham, UK

    Carl Senior

  5. University of Gibraltar, Gibraltar, Gibraltar

    Carl Senior

  6. Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red de Salud Mental, CIBERSAM, Madrid, Spain

    Judith Usall, Christian Stephan-Otto & Gildas Brébion

Authors
  1. Christian Núñez
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Constantina Theofanopoulou
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Carl Senior
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Maria Rosa Cambra
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Judith Usall
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  6. Christian Stephan-Otto
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  7. Gildas Brébion
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Christian Stephan-Otto.

Ethics declarations

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.

Electronic supplementary material

Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.

Supplementary material 1 (DOC 31 kb)

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Núñez, C., Theofanopoulou, C., Senior, C. et al. A large-scale study on the effects of sex on gray matter asymmetry. Brain Struct Funct 223, 183–193 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00429-017-1481-4

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00429-017-1481-4

Keywords

  • Structural neuroimaging
  • Global asymmetry
  • Dice coefficient
  • Neurodevelopment
  • Sex differences
  • Language