Sex differences in functional connectivity during fetal brain development

Publication date: Available online 5 March 2019Source: Developmental Cognitive NeuroscienceAuthor(s): M.D. Wheelock, J.L. Hect, E. Hernandez-Andrade, S.S. Hassan, R. Romero, A.T. Eggebrecht, M.E. ThomasonABSTRACTSex-related differences in brain and behavior are apparent across the life course, but the exact set of processes that guide their emergence in utero remains a topic of vigorous scientific inquiry. Here, we evaluate sex and gestational age (GA)-related change in functional connectivity (FC) within and between brain wide networks. Using resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging we examined FC in 118 human fetuses between 25.9 and 39.6 weeks GA (70 male; 48 female). Infomap was applied to the functional connectome to identify discrete prenatal brain networks in utero. A consensus procedure produced an optimal model comprised of 16 distinct fetal neural networks distributed throughout the cortex and subcortical regions. We used enrichment analyses to assess network-level clustering of strong FC-GA correlations separately in each sex group, and to identify network pairs exhibiting distinct patterns of GA-related change in FC between males and females. We discovered both within and between network FC-GA associations that varied with sex. Specifically, associations between GA and posterior cingulate-temporal pole and fronto-cerebellar FC were observed in females only, whereas the association between GA and increased intracerebellar FC was stronger in males. These ...
Source: Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience - Category: Neuroscience Source Type: research