Editorial: From sex differences in neuroscience to a neuroscience of sex differences: new directions and perspectives

Citation: Pletzer B (2015) Editorial: From sex differences in neuroscience to a neuroscience of sex differences: new directions and perspectives. While we are looking back at a century of behavioral research on sex differences in cognition and emotion, sex differences have for a long time been disregarded as a confound in neuroscience. Several researchers still argue that sex differences in cognition are overall small and negligible Indeed the data so far are by no means consistent. These inconsistencies are to a large part attributable to small sample sizes and low power on the one hand and a large variation in methodologies on the other hand. This is even more true for studies on menstrual cycle and hormonal contraceptive dependent effects on the brain, as will be pointed out However, another reason that these inconsistencies still exist may also be that neuroscience, looking at the topic from the angle of political correctness, has refrained from studying sex differences in the brain in more detail. One major goal of this Research Topic is to change this view and look at the topic from a different angle: Women don't have to be like men to be treated as equal. Women have a right to be women and if that includes being different from men, women have a right to be different from men and— importantly—also vice versa. After all, innovation stems from diversity (e.g., Hewlett et al., 2013). Furthermore, women have a right to understand these differences as well as the hormonal changes that not only their body, but also their brain, goes through during their lifetime. So it's important that neuroscience starts paying more attention! The aim of this Research Topic is to point out directions and perspectives on how to resolve inconsistencies in sex difference research. The idea is to move from scattered findings on sex differences in the brain to a neuroscience of sex differences that will help researchers to understand and predict sex differences in their findings and integrate them into their theories. From the beginning of sex difference research, it has been hypothesized that sex differences in behavior are at least in part driven by hormonal influences on the brain either during development (organizational) or later in life (activational) (e.g., Kelly et al., 1999). Of course, not all sex differences can be attributable to sex hormones, but genetic, epigenetic, and chromosomal effects also play an important role, as …