ArticleCerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991)2018
A Key Characteristic of Sex Differences in the Developing Brain: Greater Variability in Brain Structure of Boys than Girls.
Article in Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991), 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 82 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
82 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 164 citations in OpenAlex.
- Greater male than female variability in regional brain structure across the lifespan.Human brain mapping · 2022Pooled it
- Brain-based sex differences in autism spectrum disorder across the lifespan: A systematic review of structural MRI, fMRI, and DTI findings.NeuroImage. Clinical · 2021Pooled it
- How does machine learning bias in prediction of behavioral phenotypes relate to individual characteristics?Research square · 2026Article
- No gender differences in predictive processing.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Interrogating cognitive and neural group variation in childhood: Examples in adolescent brain cognitive development and Oregon attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder-1000 cohorts.Journal of psychopathology and clinical science · 2026Article
- Synaptic, cellular, and circuit mechanisms underlying sex differences in behaviors.Biology of sex differences · 2026Review
- From Developmental Timing to Clinical Visibility: An Integrative Narrative Review of Sex-Related Neurocognitive Development.Children (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- Synchrony between brain age and internalising and externalising symptoms across adolescence.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2026Article
- Sex/gender differences in the level and variability of autistic traits: a meta-analysis of the Autism-Spectrum Quotient.Health psychology report · 2026Article
- Inter- and intra-individual differences in brain sex map to neuroendocrine profiles.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Perceived stress mediates the association between orbitofrontal cortex grey matter volume and depressive symptoms in older women.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Individual Differences in Developmental Trajectories of Global and Subcortical Brain Volumes Between Late Childhood and Late Adolescence: Findings From a 12-Wave Neuroimaging Study.Human brain mapping · 2025Article
- Current challenges and future directions for brain age prediction in children and adolescents.Nature communications · 2025Review
- Sulcal pits as potential markers of early sex-related human brain differences in healthy adults.Biology of sex differences · 2025Article
- A cross-species analysis of neuroanatomical covariance sex differences in humans and mice.Biology of sex differences · 2025Article
- Characterizing the effects of age, puberty, and sex on variability in resting-state functional connectivity in late childhood and early adolescence.NeuroImage · 2025Article
- ComBatLS: A Location- and Scale-Preserving Method for Multi-Site Image Harmonization.Human brain mapping · 2025Article
- Childhood Physical Fitness as a Predictor of Cognition and Mental Health in Adolescence: The PANIC Study.Sports medicine (Auckland, N.Z.) · 2025Article
- Child Maltreatment Characteristics and Adult Physical Multimorbidity in Germany.JAMA network open · 2025Article
- More similarity than difference: Comparison of within- and between-sex variance in early adolescent brain structure.Imaging neuroscience (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2025Article
22 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors at 3 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
Abstract
In many domains, including cognition and personality, greater variability is observed in males than in females in humans. However, little is known about how variability differences between sexes are represented in the brain. The present study tested whether there is a sex difference in variance in brain structure using a cohort of 643 males and 591 females aged between 3 and 21 years. The broad age-range of the sample allowed us to test if variance differences in the brain differ across age. We observed significantly greater male than female variance for several key brain structures, including cerebral white matter and cortex, hippocampus, pallidum, putamen, and cerebellar cortex volumes. The differences were observed at both upper and lower extremities of the distributions and appeared stable across development. These findings move beyond mean levels by showing that sex differences were pronounced for variability, thereby providing a novel perspective on sex differences in the developing brain.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.