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Sex continuum in the brain and body during adolescence and psychological traits

Nature Human Behaviour volume 5, pages 265–272 (2021)Cite this article

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Abstract

Many traits of the brain and body show marked sex differences, but the distributions of their values overlap substantially between the two sexes. To investigate variations associated with biological sex, beyond binary differences, we create continuous sex scores capturing the inter-individual variability in phenotypes. In an adolescent cohort (n = 1,029; 533 females), we have generated three sex scores based on brain–body traits: ‘overall’ (48 traits), ‘pubertal’ (26 traits) and ‘non-pubertal’ (22 traits). We then conducted sex-stratified multiple linear regressions (adjusting for age) using sex scores to test associations with sex hormones, personality traits and internalizing–externalizing behaviour. Higher sex scores (that is, greater ‘femaleness’) were associated with lower testosterone in males only, as well as lower extraversion, higher internalizing and lower externalizing in both sexes. The associations with testosterone, internalizing and externalizing were driven by pubertal sex scores, underscoring the importance of adolescence in shaping within-sex individual variability.

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Fig. 1: Distributions of sex scores.
Fig. 2: Age-adjusted associations between testosterone and sex scores in males.

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Data availability

The data are available upon request, addressed to T.P. (tpausresearch@gmail.com) or Z.P. (zdenka.pausova@sickkids.ca).

Code availability

The R code used to compute the sex scores is provided as a supplementary attachment.

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Acknowledgements

The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (Z.P., T.P.), Heart and Stroke Foundation of Quebec (Z.P.) and the Canadian Foundation for Innovation (Z.P.) support the Saguenay Youth Study. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript. The authors acknowledge J. Shin for her statistical advice.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Bloorview Research Institute, Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

    Daniel E. Vosberg, Nadine Parker & Tomáš Paus

  2. Research Institute, Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

    Daniel E. Vosberg, Catriona Syme & Zdenka Pausova

  3. Institute of Medical Science, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

    Nadine Parker & Tomáš Paus

  4. Department of Health Sciences, Université du Québec à Chicoutimi, Chicoutimi, Quebec, Canada

    Louis Richer

  5. Departments of Physiology and Nutritional Sciences, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

    Zdenka Pausova

  6. Departments of Psychology and Psychiatry, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

    Tomáš Paus

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  1. Daniel E. Vosberg
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Contributions

D.E.V. contributed to the project conception, manuscript writing, analyses and figures. C.S. contributed to the participant recruitment and testing, analyses and manuscript editing. N.P. contributed to the analyses and manuscript editing. L.R. and Z.P. contributed to the SYS study design, participant recruitment and testing, and manuscript editing. T.P. contributed to the project conception, SYS study design, participant recruitment and testing, and manuscript writing.

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Correspondence to Tomáš Paus.

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The authors have no competing interests to declare.

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Peer review information Primary handling editor: Charlotte Payne.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Figs. 1–3 and Supplementary Tables 1–4.

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Supplementary Software

R script used to compute sex scores.

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Vosberg, D.E., Syme, C., Parker, N. et al. Sex continuum in the brain and body during adolescence and psychological traits. Nat Hum Behav 5, 265–272 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-020-00968-8

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