Rotman Research Institute, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada.
Prog Brain Res. 2010;186:13-28. doi: 10.1016/B978-0-444-53630-3.00002-6.
At a population level, women and men differ in a wide variety of behavioral traits and in the probabilities of developing certain mental disorders. Some of these sex differences may be related to sexual dimorphism in brain structure, as it emerges during prenatal and post-natal development. Here, I provide a brief overview of the sex-chromosome-specific pathways that underlie sexual dimorphisms in general, describe the most common brain phenotypes derived in vivo with magnetic resonance imaging, discuss the challenges in interpreting these phenotypes vis-à-vis the underlying neurobiology, and, finally, review the known sex differences in brain structure from birth, through adolescence, to adulthood.
从人口水平上看，女性和男性在各种行为特征以及某些精神障碍的发病概率上存在差异。这些性别差异中的一些可能与大脑结构的性二态性有关，这种性二态性在产前和产后发育过程中显现出来。在这里，我简要概述了一般的性二态性的性染色体特异性途径，描述了通过磁共振成像获得的最常见的脑表型，讨论了在解释这些表型与潜在神经生物学之间的关系时所面临的挑战，最后，回顾了从出生到青春期到成年的大脑结构的已知性别差异。
