Figure 4
Connectivity changes induced by prenatal VPA exposure and the interaction with sex, as estimated by sparse inverse covariance estimation. (A) The main effect of VPA exposure: the blue line indicates the connections weakened by VPA treatment, while the red line indicates the connections strengthened by VPA treatment. (B) The main effect of sex: the blue line indicates connections that were weaker in males than females. (C) The interaction effect between VPA exposure and sex: the blue line indicates areas with less pronounced connectivity increases in males when compared to females following VPA exposure, while the red line indicates more pronounced increases in connectivity in males when compared to females following VPA treatment. The activity in the IC1* (the cerebellum) and IC35* (the insula) were correlated with autistic-like behavior in Fig. 5. Each component is shown in transverse plane. Line thickness and the corresponding number indicate the relative strength (\(\tilde{{\rm{\theta }}}\), estimated partial correlation coefficient) of the connections. Only the connections with a FDR ≤ 0.05 were shown. VPA, valproic acid; IC, independent component.
