Exploring neuroendocrine influences on the sensorimotor-association axis in a female and male individual

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Abstract Human neuroimaging studies consistently show multimodal patterns of variability along a key principle of macroscale cortical organization – the sensorimotor-association (S-A) axis. However, little is known about day-to-day fluctuations in functional activity along this axis within an individual, including sex-specific neuroendocrine factors contributing to such transient changes. We leveraged data from two densely sampled healthy young adults, one female and one male, to investigate intra-individual daily variability along the S-A axis, which we computed as our measure of functional cortical organization by reducing the dimensionality of functional connectivity matrices. Daily variability was greatest in temporal limbic and ventral prefrontal regions in both participants, and was more strongly pronounced in the male subject. Next, we probed local- and system-level effects of steroid hormones and self-reported perceived stress on functional organization. Beyond shared patterns of effects, our findings revealed subtle and unique associations between neuroendocrine fluctuations and intra-individual variability along the S-A axis in the female and male participants. In sum, our study points to neuroendocrine factors as possible modulators of intra-individual variability in functional brain organization, highlighting the need for further research in larger samples to assess the sex specificity of these effects.