3.1. Brain morphometric volume
The most agreed-upon brain sexual difference is that both infant and
adolescent males have larger total brain volume than females. A
post-mortem study of mature neonates has shown that there is no
significant difference in mean brain weight between males and females
(Lenroot RK et al., 2007). Other studies reported that total brain
volume (TBV), intracranial volume (ICV), and intracranial cavity (ICC)
were larger in male than female infants (Knickmeyer RC et al, 2008;
Knickmeyer RC et al, 2018; Wang S et al., 2018). Additionally, sex was
found to be a significant factor in determining the total surface area
of the brain, with a larger cortical surface area (Li G et al., 2013;
Jha SC et al., 2018) and brain width in male than female infants by
roughly 5% (Baibakov SE and Fedorov VP, 2010). Furthermore, Villa et
al. have demonstrated a faster TBV growth rate in male than female
infants during the perinatal period (Villa LM et al., 2021), with
consistent results in infancy (Holland D. et al., 2014). In addition,
morphometric analysis of infants’ ventricles showed that male infants
demonstrated 4.5% greater anterior-posterior size of lateral
ventricles, and 24.2% greater height of the fourth ventricle compared
to female infants (Baibakov SE and Fedorov VP, 2010). On the other hand,
larger lateral ventricles (Gilmore JH et al., 2004), and a 16.9%
increase in the fourth ventricle length were reported in female compared
to male infants (Baibakov SE and Fedorov VP, 2010)..