Brain functional connectivity density and individual fluid reasoning capacity in healthy young adults

Abstract

Functional connectivity density (FCD) is a newly developed data-driven method to measure the number of functional connections of each voxel, possibly providing new insight into the neural correlates of fluid reasoning. Here, we recruited 211 healthy young adults (91 men and 120 women) to investigate associations between the global FCD and fluid reasoning capacity as measured by the Raven’s Standard Progressive Matrices. Raven’s Standard Progressive Matrices scores were correlated negatively with the global FCD in multiple brain regions of the frontal, parietal, occipital, and temporal cortices in male participants. No significant correlation was found in female participants. Our findings confirmed the association between fluid reasoning and functional connectivity of multiple cognitive-related brain regions. The positive correlation with the functional connectivity strength and the negative correlation between fluid reasoning and FCD suggest that individuals with superior fluid reasoning capacity may possess a small number of strong functional connections. The sex dichotomy of this association indicates that the fluid reasoning capacity of men and women may have different neural substrates.