Editorial: Bridging Gaps Between Sex and Gender in Neurosciences

• Published in: Frontiers in neuroscience Vol. 14; p. 561
• Main Authors: Duchesne, Annie, Pletzer, Belinda, Pavlova, Marina A., Lai, Meng-Chuan, Einstein, Gillian
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Lausanne Frontiers Research Foundation 11.06.2020; Frontiers Media S.A
• Subjects: 17β-Estradiol; Brain research; Clinical trials; cognition; Consciousness; epigenetic; Gender; Gene expression; gonadal hormones; Hormones; Nervous system; Neuroscience; Neurosciences; Nocebos; Physiology; Researchers; sex; Sexual behavior; Steroid hormones; stress; Studies; Testosterone; Women
• ISSN: 1662-453X; 1662-4548; 1662-453X
• DOI: 10.3389/fnins.2020.00561

Luo et al. demonstrate that multivariate classification approaches with high-dimensional data (e.g., tens of thousands of features per subject/observation) from cortical brain morphology can categorize adult individuals as women or men, replicating previous findings conducted with high-dimensional, large sample size, and multivariate approaches (Chekroud et al., 2016; Rosenblatt, 2016; Anderson et al., 2019). While an increasing number of theoretical models explore these differences by integrating dimensions of sex- and gender-related variables (Lai et al., 2015; Becker et al., 2017; Nebel et al., 2018), most studies tend to restrict causal explanations to either sex- or gender- related variables (Li and Graham, 2017; Hillerer et al., 2019; Slavich and Sacher, 2019). [...]looking at interaction between sex- and gender-related variables in clinical conditions may have theoretical and therapeutic benefits. [...]in a critical review of individual differences in placebo/nocebo effects, Enck and Klosterhalfen report that differences observed between women and men are more commonly reported in experimental studies than in randomized clinical trials, suggesting that methodological bias may contribute to apparent systemic group-level differences. [...]Jones et al. reveal independent contributions of combined estradiol and testosterone to sexual behavior in female rats, demonstrating the empirical value of examining the role of multiple sex steroid hormones within all individuals.