ArticleCerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991)2023
Robust sex differences in functional brain connectivity are present in utero.
Article in Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991), 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 19 papers.
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
19 citing papers in PubMed, 32 citations in OpenAlex.
- Developmental and dynamic systems: insights for sex/gender research.Biology of sex differences · 2026Review
- Functional Connectivity of the Neonatal Cerebellum is Impacted by Sex and Polygenic Liability for Autism.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2026Article
- Prenatal exposure to extreme heat and autism in children.The Science of the total environment · 2026Article
- The progression of sex differences in brain networks across the lifespan.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Sex-dimorphic reprogramming of fetal mouse brain development by maternal estradiol excess.Biology of sex differences · 2025Article
- Assessment of resting state structural-functional relationships in perisylvian region during the early weeks after birth.Brain structure & function · 2025Article
- Maternal Overweight and Obesity Alter Neurodevelopmental Trajectories During the First Year of Life: Findings from the OBESO Cohort.Children (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Evaluating the effects of volume censoring on fetal functional connectivity.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Early selective attention to the articulating mouth as a potential female-specific marker of better language development in autism: a review.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- Women, intuition, and management-the Yin and Yang of nonconscious thought.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- Sex differences in pain perception and modulation in the brain: effects of insular cortex stimulation on chronic pain relief.Brain communications · 2025Article
- Advances in Fetal Brain Imaging.Magnetic resonance imaging clinics of North America · 2024Review
- Brain structural and functional outcomes in the offspring of women experiencing psychological distress during pregnancy.Molecular psychiatry · 2024Review
- Sex Differences and Behavioral Associations with Typically Developing Pediatric Regional Cerebellar Gray Matter Volume.Cerebellum (London, England) · 2024Article
- Sex and Gender in Population Neuroscience.Current topics in behavioral neurosciences · 2024Review
- Experience of early-life pain in premature infants is associated with atypical cerebellar development and later neurodevelopmental deficits.BMC medicine · 2023Article
- Females exhibit smaller volumes of brain activation and lower inter-subject variability during motor tasks.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Diffusion tensor imaging reveals sex differences in pain sensitivity of rats.Frontiers in molecular neuroscience · 2023Article
- Systematic review and meta-analysis of MRI-based sex differences in the human fetal brain.Imaging neuroscience (Cambridge, Mass.)Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
8 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Sex-based differences in brain structure and function are observable throughout development and are thought to contribute to differences in behavior, cognition, and the presentation of neurodevelopmental disorders. Using multiple support vector machine (SVM) models as a data-driven approach to assess sex differences, we sought to identify regions exhibiting sex-dependent differences in functional connectivity and determine whether they were robust and sufficiently reliable to classify sex even prior to birth. To accomplish this, we used a sample of 110 human fetal resting state fMRI scans from 95 fetuses, performed between 19 and 40 gestational weeks. Functional brain connectivity patterns classified fetal sex with 73% accuracy. Across SVM models, we identified features (functional connections) that reliably differentiated fetal sex. Highly consistent predictors included connections in the somatomotor and frontal areas alongside the hippocampus, cerebellum, and basal ganglia. Moreover, high consistency features also implicated a greater magnitude of cross-region connections in females, while male weighted features were predominately within anatomically bounded regions. Our findings indicate that these differences, which have been observed later in childhood, are present and reliably detectable even before birth. These results show that sex differences arise before birth in a manner that is consistent and reliable enough to be highly identifiable.
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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.