Department of Psychological Sciences, Interdisciplinary Neuroscience, University of Missouri, MO, 65211-2500, Columbia, United States.
Prog Neurobiol. 2019 May;176:33-53. doi: 10.1016/j.pneurobio.2018.06.001. Epub 2018 Jun 8.
Sex-specific brain and cognitive deficits emerge with malnutrition, some infectious and neurodegenerative diseases, and often with prenatal or postnatal toxin exposure. These deficits are described in disparate literatures and are generally not linked to one another. Sexual selection may provide a unifying framework that integrates our understanding of these deficits and provides direction for future studies of sex-specific vulnerabilities. Sexually selected traits are those that have evolved to facilitate competition for reproductive resources or that influence mate choices, and are often larger and more complex than other traits. Critically, malnutrition, disease, chronic social stress, and exposure to man-made toxins compromise the development and expression of sexually selected traits more strongly than that of other traits. The fundamental mechanism underlying vulnerability might be the efficiency of mitochondrial energy capture and control of oxidative stress that in turn links these traits to current advances in neuroenergetics, stress endocrinology, and toxicology. The key idea is that the elaboration of these cognitive abilities, with more underlying gray matter or more extensive inter-modular white matter connections, makes them particularly sensitive to disruptions in mitochondrial functioning and oxidative stress. A framework of human sexually selected cognitive abilities and underlying brain systems is proposed and used to organize what is currently known about sex-specific vulnerabilities.
性别的大脑和认知缺陷会随着营养不良、某些传染性和神经退行性疾病的出现而出现，并且通常与产前或产后毒素暴露有关。这些缺陷在不同的文献中都有描述，通常彼此之间没有联系。性选择可能提供一个统一的框架，整合我们对这些缺陷的理解，并为未来研究性别特异性脆弱性提供方向。性选择的特征是那些为了促进生殖资源的竞争或影响配偶选择而进化的特征，通常比其他特征更大、更复杂。至关重要的是，营养不良、疾病、慢性社会压力和人为毒素暴露会比其他特征更严重地损害性选择特征的发育和表达。脆弱性的基本机制可能是线粒体能量捕获的效率和氧化应激的控制，这反过来又将这些特征与神经能量学、应激内分泌学和毒理学的当前进展联系起来。关键的想法是，这些认知能力的复杂性，包括更多的潜在灰质或更广泛的模块间白质连接，使它们特别容易受到线粒体功能障碍和氧化应激的影响。提出了一个人类性选择认知能力和潜在大脑系统的框架，并用于组织目前已知的性别特异性脆弱性。
