Gender versus brain size effects on subcortical gray matter volumes in the human brain

Abstract

Previous studies had reported that volume differences of gray matter (GM) in subcortical regions of the human brain were mainly caused by gender. Meanwhile, other studies had found that the distribution of GM in the human brain varied based on individual brain sizes. Main effects of volume differences of GM in subcortical regions remain unclear. Therefore, the goals of this study are twofold, namely, to determine the main effects of volume differences of GM in subcortical regions of the human brain and to investigate the independent or joint contribution of gender and brain size to subcortical volume differences. In this study, 40 male and 40 female subjects with comparable brain sizes were selected from a population of 198 individuals. The sample was divided into the following four groups: male and female groups with comparably large brain sizes and male and female groups with comparably small brain sizes. The main effects of gender and of brain size and interactions between both factors in subcortical GM volumes were examined by analyses of covariance (ANCOVAs) using a 2×2 design matrix. Volumes of GM in subcortical regions were extracted and measured by an automatic segmentation method. Furthermore, we used two datasets to test the reliability of our methods. In both datasets, we found significant brain size effects in the right amygdala and the bilateral caudate nucleus and significant gender effects in the bilateral putamen. No interactions between brain size and gender were found. In conclusion, both gender and brain size independently contributed to volume distribution in different subcortical areas of the human brain.