Hemisphere- and gender-related differences in small-world brain networks: A resting-state functional MRI study

►We employed resting-state fMRI (R-fMRI) and graph theoretical approaches to investigate hemisphere- and gender-related differences in the topological organization of human brain functional networks. ►We found that compared with females, males have a higher normalized clustering coefficient in the right hemispheric network but a lower clustering coefficient in the left hemispheric network, suggesting a hemisphere-gender interaction. ►We observed significant hemisphere-related differences in the regional nodal characteristics in various brain regions, such as the frontal and occipital regions (leftward asymmetry) and the temporal regions (rightward asymmetry).