Neural Plumbing of Men and Women Are from Mars and Venus Respectively

While measuring brain activity with magnetic resonance imaging during blood pressure trials, scientists at UCLA found that men and women had opposite responses in the right front area of the insular cortex, a part of the brain integral to the experience of emotions, blood pressure control, and self-awareness. The insular cortex has five main parts (gyri) serving different roles. The researchers found that the blood pressure response in the front right gyrus showed an opposite pattern in men and women, with men showing a greater right-sided activation in the area while the women showed a lower response.

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“This is such a critical brain area and we hadn’t expected to find such strong differences between men and women’s brains,” said Paul Macey, Ph.D., the study’s lead author. “This region, the front right insula, is involved with stress and keeping heart rate and blood pressure high. It’s possible the women had already activated this region because of psychological stress, so that when they did the physical test in the study, the brain region could not activate any more. However, it’s also possible that this region is wired differently in men and women.”

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“We have always thought that the ‘normal’ pattern was for this right front insula region to activate more than other areas during a task that raises blood pressure. However, since most earlier studies were in men or male animals, it looks like this ‘normal’ response was only in men. The healthy response in women seems to be a lower right-sided activation.”

Most studies on differences in brain functions between men and women have looked at psychological performance. In previous studies, the UCLA researchers had seen differences in heart rate and blood brain flow during blood pressure changes in men and women with obstructive sleep apnea and wanted to see if cardiovascular responses in brain areas were different in healthy men and women.

In this study (“Sex Differences in Insular Cortex Gyri Responses to the Valsalva Maneuver”), which appears on Frontiers in Neurology, researchers from the UCLA School of Nursing used the Valsalva maneuver, during which participants breathe hard out through a small tube to raise blood pressure, to measure brain activity as it controls the blood pressure change.

“This raises several questions for us, such as why is there a difference in brain pattern and might it reflect differences in health issues for men and women, particularly in cardiovascular disease variations,” noted Dr. Macey.

To find the answers, further study on this difference will be needed to gain a better understanding of susceptibility to disease, efficacy of drugs, and even the course of normal development among all individuals, not just between men and women.

“We believe that differences in the structure and function of the insula in men and women might contribute to different clinical symptoms in some medical disorders,” pointed out Dr. Macey.

What is preclinical testing?

In the process of preclinical testing of a compound or biological agent into a drug, the compound involved must go through the testing phase. First, we need to identify potential targets that can treat the disease. Then, a variety of compounds or preparations are screened out. Any compound that has shown potential as a drug for the treatment of this disease needs to be tested for toxicity before clinical testing to reduce the possibility of injury. preclinical testing What is the basis of preclinical testing? According to US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulations, a series of tests are required before a new drug is approved for use. In the first stage, basic research determines a hypothetical target for the treatment of a certain disease, and then screens small molecules or biological compounds to discover any substance with the potential to treat the disease. Then, a preclinical research phase followed, before which, as described above, the potential toxicity of the compou

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Inventory of the three major in vitro pharmacokinetic research methods

The metabolic properties of a compound are an essential factor in whether or not it can be used as a drug in the clinical setting, so pharmacokinetic studies of newly synthesized compounds are required in drug development. In vitro incubation with liver microsomes, recombinant CYP450 enzyme lines, and in vitro incubation with hepatocytes are some of the more common in vitro drug metabolism methods. 1. In vitro incubation method with liver microsomes The metabolic stability and metabolic phenotypes of candidate compounds in different species of liver microsomes are good predictors of the metabolic properties of compounds in vivo. They are practical tools for evaluating candidate compounds in the pre-development phase of drug development. Liver microsomes include rat liver microsomes, human liver microsomes, canine liver microsomes, monkey liver microsomes, and mouse liver microsomes. In in vitro incubation of the liver, microsomes are the "gold standard" for in vitro d

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Novel Parkinson’s Therapies Possible with New Mouse Model

Parkinson's disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disorder that is marked by the accumulation of the protein, α-synuclein (αS), into clumps known as Lewy bodies, which diminish neural health. Now, researchers from Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) report the development of a mouse model to induce PD-like αS aggregation, leading to resting tremor and abnormal movement control. The mouse responds to L-DOPA, similarly to patients with PD. The team's study (“Abrogating Native α-Synuclein Tetramers in Mice Causes a L-DOPA-Responsive Motor Syndrome Closely Resembling Parkinson’s Disease”) on the use of this transgenic mouse model appears in Neuron . “α-Synuclein (αS) regulates vesicle exocytosis but forms insoluble deposits in PD. Developing disease-modifying therapies requires animal models that reproduce cardinal features of PD. We recently described a previously unrecognized physiological form of αS, α-helical tetramers, and showed that familial PD-causing missense mutati

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