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

Figures

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  Fig. 1.. Schematic representation of the experimental designs and analysesinclusion criteria. (A) Female (F) participant; (B) Male (M)participant. For the female participant, experimental day 26 wasexcluded from all analyses due to compromised functional magneticresonance imaging (MRI) data; for the male participant, only morningsession data were analyzed. Figure adapted fromGrotzinger et al.(2024).

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  Fig. 2.. Daily variability in steroid hormone levels. (A) Estradiol, progesterone,and testosterone serum levels in the female participant, capturing thefull spectrum of hormonal variation across the menstrual cycle(n= 29), as originally reported byPritschet et al.(2020). Note that the menstrual cycle days shown here do notcorrespond to the experimental sessions, which were rearranged to beginat menstruation for this visualization. Experimental day 26(corresponding to menstrual cycle day 16) was excluded from allanalyses, see Methods for more detail on our data inclusion criteria;(B) Total testosterone and cortisol salivary levels across experimentaldays (n= 20), as well as estradiol andtestosterone serum levels across experimental days (n= 15) in the male participant as originally reported byGrotzinger et al.(2024).

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  Fig. 3.. Intra- and inter-individual daily variability in functional corticalorganization. (A) Mean sensorimotor-association (S-A) axis loadingsacross 29 days in the female participant; (B) Mean S-A axis loadingsacross 20 days in the male participant; (C) Intra-individual variabilityin S-A axis loadings quantified by standard deviation (STD) in thefemale participant; (D) Intra-individual variability in S-A axisloadings quantified by STD in the male participant; (E) Inter-individualdifferences in intra-individual variability quantified by thesubtraction of male from female intra-individual variability; (F)Thresholded inter-individual differences in intra-individualvariability, displaying inter-individual difference in intra-individualvariability in false discovery rate (FDR)-corrected parcels(q< 0.05) showing statistically significantdifferences as resulted by the Levene’s test for equality ofvariances, namely in about 5% of cortical regions (19 out of 400); (G)Spearman-rank correlations between patterns of intra-individualvariability in the female (F) and male (M) participants and 19 brainfeature maps sourced from the Neuromaps database, where red * andboxes indicate statistically…

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  Fig. 4.. Local-level effects on sensorimotor-association (S-A) axis loadings inthe female and male participants. Unthresholdedt-mapsof linear mixed effects model results showing patterns of local effectsof (A) Estradiol, (B) Progesterone, and (C) Perceived stress on S-A axisloadings in the female participant; unthresholdedt-maps of linear mixed effects model results showingpatterns of local effects of (D) Testosterone, (E) Cortisol, and (F)Perceived stress on S-A axis loadings in the male participant.Delineated cortical regions show statistically significant effectsfollowing false discovery rate (FDR) correction (q< 0.05), which was used to control for multiple comparisonsacross the 400 cortical regions.

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  Fig. 5.. System-level effects of sex-predominant steroid hormones and perceivedstress on functional cortical organization. (A) Visualization of thedistribution of the seven Yeo–Krienen functional networks alongthe mean sensorimotor-association (S-A) axis in the female and maleparticipants. Heatmaps summarizing thet-values forsystem-level effects across functional networks of estradiol,progesterone, and perceived stress on the female participant’swithin- (B) and between- (D) network dispersion, and effects oftestosterone, cortisol, and perceived stress on maleparticipant’s within- (C) and between- (E) network dispersion.t-values were obtained from linear mixed effectsmodels including different sets of covariates, namely estradiol andprogesterone (for female hormone effects), testosterone and cortisol(for male hormone effects), and perceived stress only (for both femaleand male, tested separately). Red * and boxes indicatestatistical significance of effects corrected for multiple comparisons,at Bonferroni-corrected thresholds ofp< 0.004(0.025/7) for the within-network dispersion effects andp< 0.001 (0.025/21) for the between-networkdispersion effects, as well as corrected for spatial…

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  Fig. 6.. Local-level effects of estradiol and testosterone on functionalorganization in female and male participants. Unthresholdedt-maps of linear mixed effects model resultsshowing patterns of local effects of estradiol effects on S-A axisloadings in the (A) Female and (B) Male participants. (C) Scatterplotdisplaying the spatial correlation between patterns of local estradioleffects on S-A axis loadings in the female participant (F; x-axis) andin the male participant (M; y-axis),r= 0.28,pspin= 0.003; colors denote theseven Yeo–Krienen functional networks. Unthresholdedt-maps of linear mixed effects model resultsshowing patterns of local effects of testosterone on S-A axis loadingsin the (D) Female and (E) Male participants. (F) Scatterplot displayingthe spatial correlation between patterns of local testosterone effectson S-A axis loadings in the female participant (x-axis) and in the maleparticipant (y-axis),r= 0.57,pspin= 0.001. Delineatedcortical regions show statistically significant effects following falsediscovery rate (FDR) correction (q< 0.05),which was used to control for multiple comparisons across the 400cortical regions.

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  Fig. 7.. System-level effects of estradiol and testosterone on within- andbetween-network dispersion in female and male participants. (A)Visualization of the distribution of the seven Yeo–Krienenfunctional networks along the mean sensorimotor-association (S-A) axisin the female and male participants. Heatmaps summarizing thet-values for system-level effects across functionalnetworks of estradiol and testosterone for the femaleparticipant’s within- (B) and between- (D) network dispersion,and the male participant’s within- (C) and between- (E) networkdispersion.t-values were obtained from linear mixedeffects models including estradiol and testosterone as covariates inboth the female and male models, tested separately per participant. Noneof the tested effects were statistically significant after correctionfor multiple comparisons, that is, at Bonferroni-corrected thresholds ofp< 0.004 (0.025/7) for the within-networkeffects andp< 0.001 (0.025/21) for thebetween-network effects. Positivet-values representhigher segregation and negativet-values representhigher integration effects. V, visual; SM, somatomotor; DA, dorsalattention; VA, ventral attention; L, limbic; FP, frontoparietal;…