Sexual dimorphism in the human corpus callosum: an MRI study using the OASIS brain database

A number of studies have reported that, "relative to brain size," the midsagittal corpus callosum cross-sectional area (CCA) in females is on average larger than in males. However, others suggest that these may be spurious differences created in the CCA-to-brain-size ratio because brain si...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inCerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. 1991) Vol. 23; no. 10; pp. 2514 - 2520
Main Authors Ardekani, Babak A, Figarsky, Khadija, Sidtis, John J
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States Oxford University Press 01.10.2013
Subjects
Adolescent
Adult
Aged
Aged, 80 and over
Corpus Callosum - anatomy & histology
Databases, Factual
Female
Humans
Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Male
Middle Aged
Sex Characteristics
Young Adult
multiple regression analysis
connectivity
automatic segmentation
gender differences
neuroimaging
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Summary:A number of studies have reported that, "relative to brain size," the midsagittal corpus callosum cross-sectional area (CCA) in females is on average larger than in males. However, others suggest that these may be spurious differences created in the CCA-to-brain-size ratio because brain size tends to be larger in males. To help resolve this controversy, we measured the CCA on all 316 magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans of normal subjects (18-94 years) in the OASIS (Open Access Series of Imaging Studies) cross-sectional dataset, and used multiple regression analysis to statistically control for the confounding effects of brain size and age to test the null hypothesis that the average CCA is not different between genders. An additional analysis was performed on a subset of 74 young adults (37 males and 37 females; 18-29 years) matched closely to brain size. Our null hypothesis was rejected in both analyses. In the entire sample (n= 316), controlling for brain size and age, the average CCA was significantly (P< 0.03) larger in females. The difference favoring females was more pronounced in the young adults cohort (P< 0.0005). These results provide strong additional evidence that the CCA is larger in females after correcting for the confounding effect of brain size.
ISSN:1047-3211
1460-2199
DOI:10.1093/cercor/bhs253