Brandon Abbs

Harvard Medical School, Department of Psychiatry

Brigham and Woman's Hospital, Department of Medicine

While there are clear biological differences between men and women, how they translate into differences in cognitive function is not always known.  I will present a developmental model of cognitive sex differences wherein hormones affect the structure and function of specific brain regions throughout development and into adulthood, resulting in adulthood sex differences in cognition.  Evidence for this model will come from structural MRI (sMRI) and functional MRI (fMRI) studies of the verbal memory network in the human brain: hippocampus, parahippocampus, prefrontal cortex, anterior cingulate cortex, and inferior parietal cortex.  sMRI and fMRI studies indicated differences within the memory network that are hormonally regulated, particularly areas of prefrontal and parietal cortex.These differences can inform our understanding of schizophrenia, where we find sex differences in the onset, course, and outcome of this disease. I will show that the regions that show sex differences in healthy adults also show structural sex differences in patients with schizophrenia and that these differences help to explain preserved verbal memory function in women with schizophrenia (above and beyond normal sex differences in verbal memory function). Thus, the areas that are structurally and functionally different in healthy men and women, may also be responsible for preserved cognition in women with schizophrenia.