Sex differences in the brain

This special issue of Cognitive Neuroscience focuses on sex differences in the brain. Berchicci, Bianco, and Di Russo found ERP auditory cortex activity was larger in females than males during sound perception. Spets, Fritch, Thakral, & Slotnick reported greater fMRI activity during high- versus low-confidence spatial memory in males than females within the lateral prefrontal cortex and other brain regions. Using fMRI resting-state data, Murray, Maurer, Peechatka, Frederick, Kaiser, and Janes observed females spent more time in transient dorsal attention/occipital/sensory-motor network states and males spent more time in transient salience network states, and de Lacy, Kutz, and Calhoun found that brain dynamism (transitioning between brain states) was correlated with anxiety/depression in males and drive/novelty-seeking/self-control in females. Kurth, Gaser, and Luders predicted the sex of girls and boys with an 80.4% accuracy using a classifier based on anatomic (MRI) data. In a discussion paper, Spets and Slotnick conducted an fMRI meta-analysis that revealed greater male than female long-term memory activity in the lateral prefrontal cortex, visual processing regions, and the parahippocampal cortex, and argued against the claim there is reporting bias in sex-differences studies. In response to this discussion paper, commentaries were written by Cahill; de Lacy; Hausmann; McGlade, Rogowska, and Yurgelun-Todd; Sneider and Silveri; Tejavibulya and Scheinost; Wiersch and Weis; Young and Compère. It is hoped that these findings will help motivate a shift in the field to consider sex as a factor in cognitive neuroscience studies.