ArticleCerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991)2021
The Human Brain Is Best Described as Being on a Female/Male Continuum: Evidence from a Neuroimaging Connectivity 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 16 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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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.
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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
16 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Sex differences in brain homotopic co-activations: a meta-analytic study.Brain structure & function · 2022Pooled it
- The role of psychopharmacology and cognitive neuroscience in understanding the brain in the treatment of psychiatric disorders and neurological diseases for the benefit of society.Journal of psychopharmacology (Oxford, England) · 2026Article
- The progression of sex differences in brain networks across the lifespan.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Sex-related biological variation and mental toughness in soccer: a 2D:4D digit-ratio study of Type a, Type B and Type C classification across playing positions.Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2026Article
- A Proposal for Terminology for Clear Communication and Avoidance of Confusion in Relation to Sex, the Social Expectations of the Sexes and Gender Identity.Archives of sexual behavior · 2025Article
- Genetic risk predicts adolescent mood pathology via sexual differentiation of brain function and physiological aging.Nature communications · 2025Article
- "Precision Medicine" and the Failed Search for Binary Brain Sex Differences to Address Gender Behavioral Health Disparities.American journal of human biology : the official journal of the Human Biology Council · 2025Review
- Sex differences of signal complexity at resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging and their associations with the estrogen-signaling pathway in the brain.Cognitive neurodynamics · 2024Article
- Beyond the binary: Characterizing the relationships between sex and neuropeptide receptor binding density measures in the rat brain.Hormones and behavior · 2024Article
- Deep learning models reveal replicable, generalizable, and behaviorally relevant sex differences in human functional brain organization.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Article
- Pattern recognition reveals sex-dependent neural substrates of sexual perception.Human brain mapping · 2023Article
- Gender and sex in eating disorders: A narrative review of the current state of knowledge, research gaps, and recommendations.Brain and behavior · 2023Review
- Sex and gender in neurodevelopmental conditions.Nature reviews. Neurology · 2023Review
- Disconnectome of the migraine brain: a "connectopathy" model.The journal of headache and pain · 2021Article
- Because the machine can discriminate: How machine learning serves and transforms biological explanations of human difference.Big data & societyArticle
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
32 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Psychological androgyny has long been associated with greater cognitive flexibility, adaptive behavior, and better mental health, but whether a similar concept can be defined using neural features remains unknown. Using the neuroimaging data from 9620 participants, we found that global functional connectivity was stronger in the male brain before middle age but became weaker after that, when compared with the female brain, after systematic testing of potentially confounding effects. We defined a brain gender continuum by estimating the likelihood of an observed functional connectivity matrix to represent a male brain. We found that participants mapped at the center of this continuum had fewer internalizing symptoms compared with those at the 2 extreme ends. These findings suggest a novel hypothesis proposing that there exists a neuroimaging concept of androgyny using the brain gender continuum, which may be associated with better mental health in a similar way to psychological androgyny.
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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.