ArticleMolecular autism2021
Towards robust and replicable sex differences in the intrinsic brain function of autism.
Article in Molecular autism, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 37 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
37 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 73 citations in OpenAlex.
- Atypical local brain connectivity in pediatric autism spectrum disorder? A coordinate-based meta-analysis of regional homogeneity studies.European archives of psychiatry and clinical neuroscience · 2024Pooled it
- Sex/gender differences in the human autistic brains: A systematic review of 20 years of neuroimaging research.NeuroImage. Clinical · 2021Pooled it
- Sex-stratified insights into the genetics of brain volumes in late adulthood.Biology of sex differences · 2026Article
- Autism subtypes identified using cross-species functional connectivity analyses.Nature neuroscience · 2026Article
- Optimizing functional connectivity scanning conditions for predicting autistic traits.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2026Article
- Mapping brain growth and sex differences across prenatal to postnatal development.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Optimizing functional connectivity scanning conditions for predicting autistic traits.Nature. Mental health · 2026Article
- Exploring atypical spatial-functional coupling in adolescent autism spectrum disorder: insights from neurodevelopment and transcriptomic architecture.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2026Article
- Sex Similarities and Differences in Brain Dynamic Functional Connectivity Among Individuals With and Without Autism Spectrum Disorders.Human brain mapping · 2025Article
- Contextual auditory processing in the inferior colliculus is affected in a sex- and age-dependent manner in the valproic acid-induced rat model of autism.PLoS biology · 2025Article
- Biological subtyping of autism via cross-species fMRI.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Region-Specific Brain Volume Changes Emerge in Adolescence in the Valproic Acid Model of Autism and Parallel Human Findings.Developmental neuroscience · 2025Article
- Sex differences in brain functional specialization and interhemispheric cooperation among children with autism spectrum disorders.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Sex-biasing influence of autism-associatedScience advances · 2024Article
- Sex modulation of faces prediction error in the autistic brain.Communications biology · 2024Article
- Cortico-basal ganglia white matter microstructure is linked to restricted repetitive behavior in autism spectrum disorder.Molecular autism · 2024Article
- Deep learning based joint fusion approach to exploit anatomical and functional brain information in autism spectrum disorders.Brain informatics · 2024Article
- Article
- Endophenotype trait domains for advancing gene discovery in autism spectrum disorder.Journal of neurodevelopmental disorders · 2023Review
- Investigating Sex-Based Neural Differences in Autism and Their Extended Reality Intervention Implications.Brain sciences · 2023Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
21 authors at 11 institutions in 8 countries.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundMarked sex differences in autism prevalence accentuate the need to understand the role of biological sex-related factors in autism. Efforts to unravel sex differences in the brain organization of autism have, however, been challenged by the limited availability of female data.
methodsWe addressed this gap by using a large sample of males and females with autism and neurotypical (NT) control individuals (ABIDE; Autism: 362 males, 82 females; NT: 409 males, 166 females; 7-18 years). Discovery analyses examined main effects of diagnosis, sex and their interaction across five resting-state fMRI (R-fMRI) metrics (voxel-level Z > 3.1, cluster-level P < 0.01, gaussian random field corrected). Secondary analyses assessed the robustness of the results to different pre-processing approaches and their replicability in two independent samples: the EU-AIMS Longitudinal European Autism Project (LEAP) and the Gender Explorations of Neurogenetics and Development to Advance Autism Research.
resultsDiscovery analyses in ABIDE revealed significant main effects of diagnosis and sex across the intrinsic functional connectivity of the posterior cingulate cortex, regional homogeneity and voxel-mirrored homotopic connectivity (VMHC) in several cortical regions, largely converging in the default network midline. Sex-by-diagnosis interactions were confined to the dorsolateral occipital cortex, with reduced VMHC in females with autism. All findings were robust to different pre-processing steps. Replicability in independent samples varied by R-fMRI measures and effects with the targeted sex-by-diagnosis interaction being replicated in the larger of the two replication samples-EU-AIMS LEAP. LIMITATIONS: Given the lack of a priori harmonization among the discovery and replication datasets available to date, sample-related variation remained and may have affected replicability.
conclusionsAtypical cross-hemispheric interactions are neurobiologically relevant to autism. They likely result from the combination of sex-dependent and sex-independent factors with a differential effect across functional cortical networks. Systematic assessments of the factors contributing to replicability are needed and necessitate coordinated large-scale data collection across studies.
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