Network-specific sex differentiation of intrinsic brain function in males with autism.
Dorothea L Floris, Meng-Chuan Lai, Tanmay Nath and 2 others
PMID 29541439WHAT IT FOUND
Resting brain scans in males with autism showed overlap with typical sex differences in two ways.
Autism-related lower connectivity overlapped male-typical patterns in social-thinking networks and female-typical patterns in movement and hearing networks.
Key findings
01Autism-related brain differences in males overlapped with typical sex differences across all five resting-state measures, with average overlaps of 13 to 31% of voxels.
02The overlaps split into two network patterns: male-typical patterns mainly involved default and higher-order cognitive-control networks, while female-typical patterns mainly involved somatomotor circuits.
03Cognitive mapping linked male-typical patterns to higher-order social and cognitive processes and female-typical patterns to lower-order sensory and motor processes.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they found
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What it does not show
Only males with autism were available for the autism group, so the paper cannot describe females with autism. The female-typical pattern changed more when the samples were age-matched, so age may affect some findings. Comorbid psychiatric conditions were not analysed because information was limited across the autism dataset sites. The data came from many sites and large repositories, so site differences may still affect the brain maps even after adjustment.
Declared interests
The supplied text names the National Institute of Mental Health as funder. It does not list author conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read these brain maps as evidence that autism is caused by sex differences or as guidance for therapy. The study compared brain-map overlap in males with autism and typical sex-difference maps, and it did not include females with autism.