Author(s)

Xianglai Yang, Han Zhang^*

State Grid of China Technology College, Jinan, China.

Neuroscience studies have demonstrated that functional differences in human brains between males and females might result in their cognitive and psychological distinctions. To investigate sex differences in resting-state functional networks for children, the functional brain networks of two groups including boys and girls were reconstructed by functional connectivity with significant between-group differences respectively based on two brain atlases, and then the reconstructed functional networks were compared from the viewpoint of small-world properties. The functional brain networks of the two groups both displayed topological properties of the small-world network based on different brain atlases but exhibited some sex differences in certain measures. Specifically, for the automated anatomical labeling atlas, compared with girls, boys showed stronger small-world properties and higher ability of local information processing in brain networks; for the Harvard Oxford Atlas, the shortest path length of boys increased, indicating poorer performance in both global information transmission and resistance to the random attack.

Sex Difference, Functional Connectivity, Brain Network, fMRI

Yang, X. and Zhang, H. (2020) Sex Differences in Reconstructed Resting-State Functional Brain Networks for Children. Journal of Biosciences and Medicines, 8, 166-177. doi: 10.4236/jbm.2020.812016.