Sex-related patterns of functional brain networks in children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorder.
Autistic girls’ brains show tighter network clustering that typical sex differences hide.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Li et al. (2024) scanned kids and teens with and without autism.
They looked at how brain regions talk to each other while the child rests.
The team split every group by sex to see if girls and boys show different wiring patterns.
What they found
Girls with autism had tighter, more clustered brain networks than typical girls.
Boys with autism looked the same as typical boys.
The usual girl-boy brain difference disappeared in autism, especially in the left middle temporal area.
How this fits with other research
Stevens et al. (2018) saw the opposite pattern during a motor task: autism raised connectivity in all kids.
The new study shows the boost is driven by girls, not boys, when the brain is at rest.
Zhao et al. (2024) also used graph theory this year but did not split by sex; Cuicui’s data say that step is critical.
Mulder et al. (2020) found autistic girls enter puberty early; together the papers suggest biology hits autistic girls earlier and harder.
Why it matters
If you assess girls with autism, know their brains may look more connected than boys’.
A “typical” autism brain template could miss girls who need support.
Add sex-specific questions to intake forms and consider earlier puberty education for autistic girls.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Although numerous studies have emphasized the male predominance in autism spectrum disorder (ASD), how sex differences are related to the topological organization of functional networks remains unclear. This study utilized imaging data from 86 ASD (43 females, aged 7-18 years) and 86 typically developing controls (TCs) (43 females, aged 7-18 years) obtained from Autism Brain Imaging Data Exchange databases, constructed individual whole-brain functional networks, used a graph theory analysis to compute topological metrics, and assessed sex-related differences in topological metrics using a 2 × 2 factorial design. At the global level, females with ASD exhibited significantly higher cluster coefficient and local efficiency than female TCs, while no significant difference was observed between males with ASD and male TCs. Meanwhile, the neurotypical sex differences in cluster coefficient and local efficiency observed in TCs were not present in ASD. At the nodal level, ASD exhibited abnormal nodal centrality in the left middle temporal gyrus.
Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research, 2024 · doi:10.1002/aur.3180