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Symposium
The topic of sex, gender, and brain research is increasingly relevant as both biological sex and gender identity are recognized to have profound effects on brain structure, function, and health. This symposium provides a timely and essential platform to address these critical issues by bridging cutting-edge neuroimaging research with clinical considerations. As the scientific community advances, it is imperative to recognize how sex and gender influence brain function and disease, particularly in neuroimaging and neuroscience. By bringing together women researchers from diverse fields, this event will foster multidisciplinary collaboration, allowing participants to share insights, challenges, and innovative approaches to incorporating sex and gender considerations into research and clinical practices. The symposium aims to highlight best practices in clinical research, methodological developments, and emerging findings that will shape the future of brain health and neuroimaging. Desired learning outcomes include raising awareness of gender-related gaps in brain research and clinical care, promoting gender equity in these fields, and fostering a more inclusive approach to understanding the brain. Additionally, the symposium will facilitate knowledge exchange, enabling participants to better understand how sex and gender differences affect brain health and disease, and how this knowledge can be applied to improve treatment outcomes. It will also serve as a networking and mentorship opportunity, particularly for early-stage researchers, helping to build future collaborations and advance the field of sex, gender, and brain research using neuroimaging techniques.
1. Participants will understand the impact of sex and gender on brain structure and function.
2. Participants will explore an importance of comprehensive understanding of how diverse sociodemographic factors influence brain and behavior.
3. Participants will learn about how to promote inclusive research practices they can implement in their participant recruitment, data acquisition, and data analysis to facilitate the engagement and participation of more diverse populations in their neuroimaging research.
This symposium will address the importance of considering sociodemographic influences on the brain and behavior, making it of broad interest to a diverse set of human brain mapping researchers, including clinicians, neuroscientists, and psychologists. Any OHBM members who self-identifies as women, trainees who self-identify as women, and those from other genders who support the goals of the Women Faculty Special Interest Group (WF-SIG) will be especially encouraged to attend this symposium.
Presentations
This introductory talk will highlight the critical need to address sex and gender disparities in brain research, emphasizing the necessity of bridging knowledge gaps in neuroscience research and clinical practice. By exploring their impact on neuropsychiatric disorders across different stages throughout the entire life cycle, this session will advocate for comprehensive research to elucidate the biological, social, and environmental factors contributing to these disparities. Additionally, the session will promote interdisciplinary collaboration and will discuss the roles of academic journals in addressing these variations.
Presenter
Hyang Woon Lee, MD, PhD, Ewha Womans University School of Medicine
Neurology anc Computational Medicine
Seoul, DC
Korea, Republic of
This lecture will explore recent strategies to integrate sex and gender analysis across editorial policies in world-renowned scientific journals. The presentation will highlight key advancements and current trends in incorporating sex and gender perspectives into scientific research and publishing. Additionally, this talk will address ongoing challenges in promoting gender equality within the neuroscience and neuroimaging communities, such as OHBM, while emphasizing the importance of inclusive research practices. Attendees will gain insights into efforts to enhance gender equity in scientific research and the pivotal role of editorial policies in driving this change.
Age-related episodic memory decline can be an early sign of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) – a disease that is more prevalent in females than males. Importantly, there is growing evidence that midlife is a critical period in adulthood when episodic memory declines, and changes in brain regions affected by AD arise. Midlife is also the time that females with ovaries experience spontaneous menopause. Yet, little is known about the effects of biological sex and menopause status on age-related episodic memory decline and its neural correlates at midlife. In this talk I will present results from the ongoing Brain Health at Midlife and Menopause (BHAMM) study which aims to fill this knowledge gap and determine what factors support and/or hinder memory and brain function in males and females at midlife. Our initial results suggest that middle-aged females, but not males, exhibited age-related episodic memory decline, and that this effect was driven by post-menopausal females. Task-based fMRI analysis showed that memory decline at post-menopause was associated with altered activity in occipital, parahippocampal, lateral frontal, and parietal cortices, compared to premenopausal females. However, there was significant inter-individual variability in brain and memory function in post-menopause. Females with poor vascular health exhibited greater memory-related deficits in post-menopause. Together these studies highlight the importance of considering biological sex and menopause status in cognitive neurosciences.
Presenter
M. Natasha Rajah, PhD, Toronto Metropolitan University
Department of Psychology
Montréal, Québec
Canada
This talk will outline sex differences in the neurobiology of addiction. Combining advanced neuroimaging and global cohorts, the presentation will overview emerging evidence of overlaps and differences between sexes in the neurobiology of addiction to distinct substances, including cannabis and alcohol. The presentation will also highlight extant knowledge gaps and will outline a new multidisciplinary international framework to generate new knowledge that will inform personalized treatment for people who experience addiction worldwide.
Global brain volume differences between males and females emerge as early as 11 weeks gestational age. While males show greater global brain volume from this period on, a lifespan perspective of sex differences highlights periods where these differences have peaks and troughs over development. Namely, there is a peak in mid-gestation, at 10 months of age, and an additional peak associated with the onset of puberty. Further, studies of regional brain sex differences shows localized brain regions that develop along different trajectories, including in youth who are gender diverse. This presentation will show new and existing studies that demonstrate sex-based differences in trajectories, including how differences in these trajectories in youth with mental health conditions. Finally, using a large-scale study of simulated brain data at five independent sites over three continents, this presentation will also discuss how researchers perceive sex-based trajectories in brain development in relation to large, population-based studies of child brain development.
Presenter
Tonya White, PhD, National Institutes of Mental Health Bethesda, MD
United States