Gender differences and Sleep-related cortical morphology in HCP S1200

[nil ahmadi]

Hello everyone,

I am currently working on a structural MRI study using the HCP S1200 dataset to investigate Gender differences and the  relationship between sleep quality and cortical morphology, including cortical thickness, surface area, and cortical volume.

The subjects were divided into four groups:
• Good-sleep females (GF)
• Bad-sleep females (BF)
• Good-sleep males (GM)
• Bad-sleep males (BM)

I performed whole-brain vertex-wise analyses using FreeSurfer and SurfStat on the fsaverage surface.

Interestingly, I found significant FDR-corrected differences (p ≤ 0.05) when comparing:
• females vs males within the bad-sleep group (BF vs BM)
• females vs males within the good-sleep group (GF vs GM)

However, when comparing sleep quality within each sex separately:
• BF vs GF  
• BM vs GM

the results did not survive FDR correction.

Has anyone working with HCP S1200 sleep-related data observed a similar pattern?

Could this suggest that sex-related cortical differences are stronger than sleep-quality-related effects in this young healthy cohort? Alternatively, could this pattern indicate a potential sex-by-sleep interaction effect rather than clear within-sex sleep effects?

I would greatly appreciate any insights, methodological suggestions, or related references.

Thank you in advance