ArticleNature communications2022
An analysis of neuroscience and psychiatry papers published from 2009 and 2019 outlines opportunities for increasing discovery of sex differences.
Article in Nature communications, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 108 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
108 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Hemispheric asymmetries in borderline personality disorder: a systematic review.European archives of psychiatry and clinical neuroscience · 2025Pooled it
- Puberty, pregnancy, and menopause show shared and distinct structural changes across the lifespan.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Androgens mediate sexual dimorphism in Pilarowski-Bjornsson syndrome.American journal of human genetics · 2026Article
- Multilevel sex-influenced neurobiological signatures of early life adversity.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Article
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- Claims of sex-dependent effects in the behavioral and brain sciences are infrequently supported by valid statistical comparisons.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Sex-stratified insights into the genetics of brain volumes in late adulthood.Biology of sex differences · 2026Article
- Sex and gender reporting in Australian cancer clinical trials: are we doing enough?Research integrity and peer review · 2026Article
- The male default prevails in biomedical research: sex inclusion in Nature (2025).Biology of sex differences · 2026Article
- Dual adeno-associated virus system for selective and sparse labeling of astrocytes.Neural regeneration research · 2026Article
- Gut microbiota restructured by social isolation: Evidence for sex-specific response patterns.Brain, behavior, & immunity - health · 2026Article
- Sex Differences in Depression: Adult Cytogenesis as Potential Target for Precision Psychiatry.Cells · 2026Review
- Phasing out animal research prematurely will maintain gender inequities in medicine.Nature neuroscience · 2026Article
- Twenty years of sex and gender science in health research: a policy statement from the Organization for the Study of Sex Differences.Biology of sex differences · 2026Review
- Sex-specific changes in the hippocampal proteome of Negr1Biology of sex differences · 2026Article
- Single-cell map of the female brain across reproductive transitions.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Menstrual cycle modulates the effect of BDNF Val66Met variant on category learning.Biology of sex differences · 2026Article
- The "sex-specific effect:" Evaluating analytical approaches to sex-dependence in the behavioral and brain sciences.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- The EEG-Indexed Impacts of Caffeine on Auditory Novelty Processing Across Phases of the Human Menstrual Cycle.The European journal of neuroscience · 2026Article
48 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Sex differences exist in many neurological and psychiatric diseases, but these have not always been addressed adequately in research. In order to address this, it is necessary to consider how sex is incorporated into the design (e.g. using a balanced design) and into the analyses (e.g. using sex as a covariate) in the published literature. We surveyed papers published in 2009 and 2019 across six journals in neuroscience and psychiatry. In this sample, we find a 30% increase in the percentage of papers reporting studies that included both sexes in 2019 compared with 2009. Despite this increase, in 2019 only 19% of papers in the sample reported using an optimal design for discovery of possible sex differences, and only 5% of the papers reported studies that analysed sex as a discovery variable. We conclude that progress to date has not been sufficient to address the importance of sex differences in research for discovery and therapeutic potential for neurological and psychiatric disease.
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