ArticleCerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991)2021
Investigating Sexual Dimorphism of Human White Matter in a Harmonized, Multisite Diffusion Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study.
Article in Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991), 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 14 papers.
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Who cites it
14 citing papers in PubMed, 24 citations in OpenAlex.
- Association between peripheral inflammation and free-water imaging in Major Depressive Disorder before and after ketamine treatment - A pilot study.Journal of affective disorders · 2022Trial
- Association between vascular risk factors and white matter integrity among diverse predominantly older Hispanic/Latino adults from the SOL-INCA MRI study.GeroScience · 2026Article
- White matter microstructural and macrostructural profiles during midlife reveal sex differences between men and women at different menopausal stages.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Sex and age differences in glia and myelin in nonhuman primate and human spinal cords: implications for pathology.Cell death discovery · 2025Article
- Executive functioning, behavior, and white matter microstructure in the chronic phase after pediatric mild traumatic brain injury: results from the adolescent brain cognitive development study.Psychological medicine · 2024Article
- More organized white matter is associated with positivity bias in older adults.Brain imaging and behavior · 2024Article
- Harmonized diffusion MRI data and white matter measures from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study.Scientific data · 2024Article
- Characterization of the extracellular free water signal in schizophrenia using multi-site diffusion MRI harmonization.Molecular psychiatry · 2023Article
- Sex differences, asymmetry, and age-related white matter development in infants and 5-year-olds as assessed with tract-based spatial statistics.Human brain mapping · 2023Article
- Sleep Quality Disturbances Are Associated with White Matter Alterations in Veterans with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and Mild Traumatic Brain Injury.Journal of clinical medicine · 2023Article
- Between-sex variability of resting state functional brain networks in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).Journal of neural transmission (Vienna, Austria : 1996) · 2021Article
- Sex differences in myelin content of white matter tracts in adolescents with depression.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2021Article
- Improving the predictive potential of diffusion MRI in schizophrenia using normative models-Towards subject-level classification.Human brain mapping · 2021Article
- Elucidating the relationship between white matter structure, demographic, and clinical variables in schizophrenia-a multicenter harmonized diffusion tensor imaging study.Molecular psychiatry · 2021Article
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Authors and funding
26 authors at 16 institutions in 6 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Axonal myelination and repair, critical processes for brain development, maturation, and aging, remain controlled by sexual hormones. Whether this influence is reflected in structural brain differences between sexes, and whether it can be quantified by neuroimaging, remains controversial. Diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (dMRI) is an in vivo method that can track myelination changes throughout the lifespan. We utilize a large, multisite sample of harmonized dMRI data (n = 551, age = 9-65 years, 46% females/54% males) to investigate the influence of sex on white matter (WM) structure. We model lifespan trajectories of WM using the most common dMRI measure fractional anisotropy (FA). Next, we examine the influence of both age and sex on FA variability. We estimate the overlap between male and female FA and test whether it is possible to label individual brains as male or female. Our results demonstrate regionally and spatially specific effects of sex. Sex differences are limited to limbic structures and young ages. Additionally, not only do sex differences diminish with age, but tracts within each subject become more similar to one another. Last, we show the high overlap in FA between sexes, which implies that determining sex based on WM remains open.
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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.