Sex differences in structural covariance network based on MRI cortical morphometry: effects on episodic memory

Sex differences in episodic memory (EM), remembering past events based on when and where they occurred, have been reported, but the neural mechanisms are unclear. T-1-weighted images of 111 females and 61 males were acquired from the Dallas Lifespan Brain Study. Using surface-based morphometry and structural covariance (SC) analysis, we constructed structural covariance networks (SCN) based on cortical volume, and the global efficiency (E-glob) was computed to characterize network integration. The relationship between SCN and EM was examined by SC analysis among the top-n brain regions that were most relevant to EM performance. The number of SC connections (females: 3306; males: 437, P = 0.0212) and E-glob (females: 0.1845; males: 0.0417, P = 0.0408) of SCN in females were higher than those in males. The top-n brain regions with the strongest SC in females were located in auditory network, cingulo-opercular network (CON), and default mode network (DMN), and in males, they were located in frontoparietal network, CON, and DMN. These results confirmed that the E-glob of SCN in females was higher than males, sex differences in EM performance might be related to the differences in network-level integration. Our study highlights the importance of sex as a research variable in brain science.