Fundamental sex difference in human brain architecture.

In PNAS, a report by Ingalhalikar et al. (1) has the makings of a landmark paper. Here I would like to briefly suggest why. Biomedical research in general, and neuroscience in particular, has been built on a false assumption. I refer to the assumption that one may safely ignore potential sex influences, for essentially every domain outside sexual functions and sex-specific issues like prostate function, and still learn everything fundamental there is to learn. Widespread acceptance of this false assumption among neuroscientists is the reason they still overwhelmingly use only males in their animal experiments while implying that their results will apply equally to females and why potential sex influences are still routinely ignored or dismissed even when both sexes are studied, as in many human subject and knockout mouse studies.