Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Volume 107, Issue 39, Pages 16988-16993Publisher
NATL ACAD SCIENCES
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1006025107
Keywords
sex differences; brain; cortex; development; androgen receptor
Categories
Funding
- National Institutes of Health and National Institute of Health Intramural Research
- United Kingdom Medical Research CouncilFellowship [G0701370]
- Medical Research Council [G0701370] Funding Source: researchfish
- MRC [G0701370] Funding Source: UKRI
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Humans have systematic sex differences in brain-related behavior, cognition, and pattern of mental illness risk. Many of these differences emerge during adolescence, a developmental period of intense neurostructural and endocrine change. Here, by creating movies of sexually dimorphic brain development using longitudinal in vivo structural neuroimaging, we show regionally specific sex differences in development of the cerebral cortex during adolescence. Within cortical subsystems known to underpin domains of cognitive behavioral sex difference, structural change is faster in the sex that tends to perform less well within the domain in question. By stratifying participants through molecular analysis of the androgen receptor gene, we show that possession of an allele conferring more efficient functioning of this sex steroid receptor is associated with masculinization of adolescent cortical maturation. Our findings extend models first established in rodents, and suggest that in humans too, sex and sex steroids shape brain development in a spatiotemporally specific manner, within neural systems known to underpin sexually dimorphic behaviors.
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