Recommendations for sex/gender neuroimaging research: key principles and implications for research design, analysis, and interpretation

Abstract

Neuroimaging (NI) technologies are having increasing impact in the study of complex cognitive and social processes. In this emerging field of social cognitive neuroscience, a central goal should be to increase the understanding of the interaction between the neurobiology of the individual and the environment in which humans develop and function. The study of sex/gender is often a focus for NI research, and may be motivated by a desire to better understand general developmental principles, mental health problems that show female-male disparities, and gendered differences in society. In order to ensure the maximum possible contribution of NI research to these goals, we draw attention to four key principles—overlap, mosaicism, contingency and entanglement—that have emerged from sex/gender research and that should inform NI research design, analysis and interpretation. We discuss the implications of these principles in the form of constructive guidelines and suggestions for researchers, editors, reviewers and science communicators.

Multifaceted origins of sex differences in the brain

“…Rather than an assumption, the connection between anatomy and behaviour should be a hypothesis subject to empirical testing. In the case of human imaging studies, there is concern of pervasive reverse inference in which sex differences in fMRI signal are interpreted as empirical evidence of pre-existing stereotypes, rather than actually tested [2]. In this issue, Verma and co-workers [7] tackle this question by direct comparison of performance on a computerized battery of cognitive tasks with diffusion MRI to map the connectome of boys and girls and young men and women.…”

“…A perfect storm of advances in the biology, changes in policy at major granting institutions, hyperbolic exaggeration by the media and strong pushback by select scientists have generated a maelstrom of dissenting voices. Some scientists argue that sex differences in the brain are robust and widespread [1], whereas others argue that much of the science is flawed and that inherent long-standing bias has stepped in to replace objectivity [2,3]. Everyone has an opinion, sometimes personal, sometimes data-driven.…”

Beyond sex differences: new approaches for thinking about variation in brain structure and function

“…Krieger [75,76] offers well-developed concepts for the study of what she calls 'pathways to embodiment' that are applicable to the study of sex categories and the brain. Psychological and social variables that correlate with sex category should not, however, be integrated into a single measure of gender, because gender is a complex, multilayered system [3,77,78], with psychological, behavioural and social components, each of which is multidimensional and cannot be reduced to a single variable (e.g. [3,[77][78][79][80][81]).…”

“…Moreover, in order to obtain a better understanding of the effects of sex on the phenomena under study, these effects should be studied using varied environments and on different genetic backgrounds (e.g. using different strains of inbred animals; for a similar position, see [3,74,78]). For example, currently a powerful method, the four core genotypes model is being used to disentangle the genetic and hormonal components of sex effects on brain and behaviour [93].…”

Gender and creativity: an overview of psychological and neuroscientific literature

“…This would allow one to evaluate whether gender-related advantages during creative idea generation are context-dependent, as would be predicted if different default cognitive strategies are employed as a function of gender. Great caution must be exercised when generalizing any empirical finding of gender differences to the wider context as it can easily lead to the propagation of myths (Eliot, 2011;Fine, 2010;Rippon, Jordan-Young, Kaiser, & Fine, 2014).…”