Catherine Woolley, Ph.D.
William Deering Chair in Biological Sciences, Professor, Neurobiology
Weinberg College of Arts & Sciences, Northwestern University
“Latent Sex Differences in Mechanisms of Synaptic Modulation”
Most sex differences in the brain described so far are quantitative differences in which each sex has or does something, but one sex has or does more of that thing than the other sex. We have recently described a new type of sex difference in the brain, termed latent sex differences. In a latent sex difference, each sex has or does the same thing, but achieves this through distinct underlying mechanisms. I will present evidence for latent sex differences in mechanisms of estrogen-induced and activity-dependent synaptic modulation in the hippocampus and will discuss the implications of these differences for anxiety-related behavior. The existence of latent sex differences indicates that molecular mechanisms targeted for drug development may differ between the sexes even in the absence of an overt sex difference in disease.
Friday, October 4, 2019 11:00AM-12:00PM, LIB-110
University of North Texas Health Science Center
Fort Worth, Texas