The moderating role of sex and gender on brain function and behavior

The Mediterranean Neuroscience Society Conference 2025

Sex and gender are now recognized as central variables in brain research, influencing molecular, structural, and behavioral outcomes across the lifespan. For example, sex differences in corticolimbic circuitry impact emotion, reward, memory, and stress responses, aligning with sex-specific prevalence in depression, anxiety, and addiction. Sex hormones also regulate myelination, neuroregeneration, and neurotransmission, processes key to both protection and degeneration, while neurosteroids shape synaptic plasticity and cognition in male and female brains.

Beyond biology, gendered experiences—such as unequal exposure to stress, caregiving, and healthcare access—interact with sex to influence cognition, coping, and treatment response. These insights mark a shift from viewing sex as a confounder to recognizing it as a critical determinant of brain diversity, vulnerability, and resilience. Translational research now reveals sex-specific pharmacodynamics, fear-learning circuits, and epigenetic responses to early adversity, promoting more inclusive approaches from lab to clinic.

The Mediterranean Neuroscience Society Conference 2025 provides a timely platform to explore new frameworks that integrate sex and gender in neuroscience. This Research Topic welcomes contributions from neuroscience, behavior, and clinical research exploring how sex-based biology and gendered experience jointly shape brain function, disease risk, and behavior.

• Serotonergic systems: Cellular and subcellular serotonergic mechanisms that drive sex-specific susceptibility to stress-induced affective disorders.
• Early life adverse experiences: sex-dependent epigenomic reprogramming and circuit rewiring in response to early environmental insults.
• Social isolation across the lifespan: differential impact on reward circuits and vulnerability to mood disorders (e.g. anhedonia, MDD, bipolar disorder) in males vs. females.
• Environmental exposures and mental health risk: Sex-specific neuroimmune and endocrine responses to trauma, toxicants, and substance use shaping mental health trajectories.
• Neuroendocrine modulation of resilience: Role of estrogen, progesterone, and glucocorticoid signaling in sex-dependent regulation of stress reactivity and resilience profiles.
• Social and sexual behavior: comparative studies of sex-based differences in aggression, mating, and affiliative behaviors across species.
• Decision-Making and impulsivity: Sex-specific patterns in reward sensitivity, cognitive control, and risk-taking behavior.
• Hormonal modulation of memory and learning processes across sexes: effects of cyclic and chronic fluctuations in estrogen, testosterone, and cortisol on memory performance, hippocampal plasticity, and cortical network function.
• Neurodegenerative aging: Sex-based differences in structural brain aging and biomarker signatures associated with cognitive decline.
• The role of sex and gender in emotion dysregulation across psychiatric conditions (depression, anxiety, and PTSD).

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Case Report
• Clinical Trial
• Conceptual Analysis
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• FAIR² DATA Direct Submission
• General Commentary
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Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Case Report
• Clinical Trial
• Conceptual Analysis
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• FAIR² DATA Direct Submission
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Registered Report
• Review
• Systematic Review
• Technology and Code

Keywords: sex, gender, brain function, behavior, fear-learning circuits, epigenetic response, early adversity, gendered experience

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.