Bridging Gaps Between Sex And Gender In Neurosciences

Longlisted for the 2023 PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award A lively exploration of animal behavior in all its glorious complexity, whether in tiny wasps, lumbering elephants, or ourselves. For centuries, people have been returning to the same tired nature-versus-nurture debate, trying to determine what we learn and what we inherit. In Dancing Cockatoos and the Dead Man Test, biologist Marlene Zuk goes beyond the binary and instead focuses on interaction, or the way that genes and environment work together. Driving her investigation is a simple but essential question: How does behavior evolve? Drawing from a wealth of research, including her own on insects, Zuk answers this question by turning to a wide range of animals and animal behavior. There are stories of cockatoos that dance to rock music, ants that heal their injured companions, dogs that exhibit signs of obsessive-compulsive disorder, and so much more. For insights into animal intelligence, mating behavior, and an organism’s ability to fight disease, she explores the behavior of smart spiders, silent crickets, and crafty crows. In each example, she clearly demonstrates how these traits were produced by the complex and diverse interactions of genes and the environment and urges us to consider how that same process evolves behavior in us humans. Filled with delightful anecdotes and fresh insights, Dancing Cockatoos and the Dead Man Test helps us see both other animals and ourselves more clearly, demonstrating that animal behavior can be remarkably similar to human behavior, and wonderfully complicated in its own right.

Biological differences between the sexes influence not only individual health but also public health, biomedical research, and health care. The Institute of Medicine held a workshop March 8-9, 2010, to discuss sex differences and their implications for translational neuroscience research, which bridges the gap between scientific discovery and application.

Anhedonia is a key symptom (and often risk factor) for various neuropsychiatric disorders, including depression, schizophrenia, substance use disorders, post-traumatic stress disorders, and Parkinson's Disease, among others. Across disorders, anhedonia has been associated with worse disease course, including poor response to pharmacological, psychological and neurostimulation treatments as well as completed suicide. Mounting evidence emerging from preclinical and translational sciences has clarified that "anhedonia" can be parsed into partially independent subcomponents, including incentive motivation, consummatory pleasure, reward learning, and effort-based decision making, pointing to distinct neurobiological substrates that could underlie anhedonic phenotypes. Taking an integrative approach that emphasizes cross-species integration and dimensional conceptualization of mental illnesses (e.g., Research Domain Criteria (RDoC)), this book represents the most comprehensive evaluation, synthesis and integration of theories and empirical findings focused on anhedonia. Organized across five parts, the handbook starts with chapters on the history, etiology, and assessments of anhedonia (Part I), followed by a section on the role of anhedonia in psychiatric and neurological disorders (Part II). Using the RDoC Matrix as a guide, Part III presents chapters synthetizing preclinical and clinical findings on different reward processing subdomains (e.g., reward responsiveness, reward valuation, reward learning). Part IV is focused on selected special topics, including historical and current perspectives on the transdiagnostic nature and importance of social anhedonia, the role of inflammation in the pathophysiology of anhedonia, the use of computational modeling to “dissect” anhedonia and improve its understanding, and links between anhedonia and suicide. Finally, Part V includes chapters on pharmacological, psychological and neurostimulation treatments for anhedonia.

There is no question that in recent years, the case law, practice and legal environment in which international arbitration in England is practised have all evolved and adapted to a changing world and continue to do so. In this book, a diverse range of practitioners chart this development with detailed consideration of the challenges and opportunities for the future of international arbitration in England. The topics chosen often reflect and explore preoccupations of our times, including such aspects of arbitral practice as the following: challenges to arbitrators, with particular attention to the Supreme Court’s findings in Halliburton v. Chubb; virtual hearings; diversity in international arbitration; climate change arbitration; ‘green arbitration’ practices; developing jurisprudence regarding enjoining foreign states in English proceedings; recovery of in-house costs in English-seated international arbitrations; overlapping sanctions regimes and their application to arbitral disputes in England; and the role and future of third-party funding. The fact that the essays were all written during the COVID-19 pandemic is reflected in the procedural issues which form the focus of some chapters, reminding us that when it comes, change can come quickly. For this reason, the deeply informed insights in this volume, intended as they are to ensure the continued evolution and success of international arbitration in England, will prove of immeasurable value for any practitioner making submissions before an arbitral tribunal. Jurists, academics and students will gain invaluable perspectives on the future trajectory of the field.

This research topic aims to integrate scattered findings on sex differences in neuroscience into a broader theory of how the human brain is shaped by sex and sex hormones in order to cause the great variety of sex differences that are commonly observed. It can be assumed that these differences didn’t occur arbitrarily, but that they rather determined and still determine evolutionary success of individuals and were shaped by the processes of natural and in particular sexual selection. Therefore, sex differences are not negligible and sex difference research cannot be discriminating against one sex or the other. In fact a better understanding of the underlying causes of sex differences has great advantages for both men and women and society as a whole, not only in terms of health care, but in every aspect of life. Gender equality can only work out if it is equally well understood for men and women what their individual resources and needs are. Therefore, it is of great importance to pave the way for identifying the underlying principles of structural and functional brain organization that cause men and women to act, think and feel differently. To this end it is of particular interest to identify possible similarities and interrelations between sex differences that did so far stand separately, in order to investigate whether they share a common source. To understand, where a specific sex difference comes from and whether or not it is caused by the same principle as other sex differences, it is necessary to explicitly link sex differences in behavior to their neuronal correlates and vice versa link sex differences in brain structure and function to their behavioral outcomes. In particular a new understanding of male and female brain functioning may arise from findings on how sex hormones interact with various neurotransmitter systems. In the past few years several findings demonstrated that women’s behavior is influenced by the sex hormone fluctuations they experience naturally during their menstrual cycle to the extent that sex differences may only be detectable in one cycle phase but not another. The study of menstrual cycle dependent effects gives important hints about which sex differences are activational and which are organizational. Additionally it only recently came to attention, that hormonal contraception may alter a women’s mood, cognition and behavior as a consequence of changes in brain structure and function. The underlying mechanisms are so poorly understood that it is even hard to predict, whether hormonal contraception will mask or amplify sex differences in a given task. Since the oral hormonal contraceptive pill is meanwhile used by 100 million women worldwide and even by teenagers whose brains are not yet fully developed, the question of how the synthetic steroids contained in hormonal contraceptives act on the brain is to be studied hand in hand with naturally occurring sex differences. This topic summarizes the current state of the art in sex difference research and gives new perspectives in terms of hypothesis generation an methodology. Both are necessary to gain a complete picture of what it is that makes a brain male or female and move towards a neuroscience of sex differences.