Doctoral Dissertation Research: Variation in neuroanatomy and gene expression of the primate brain

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Human males and females exhibit differences in the prevalence of certain neurological disorders, which may be influenced by differences in neuroanatomy and brain gene expression. This doctoral dissertation project uses a non-human primate model to investigate male and female variation in brain anatomy and gene expression and to consider selective pressures that may have led to this variation. This fundamental research has the potential to inform developing treatments for neurobehavioral disorders in humans, particularly given that the non-human primate model is likely to be more relevant than murine models for understanding social behavior. Funding for this project will support the research of a minority female graduate student who will also serve as an educator and mentor. She will conduct science outreach through her participation in multiple after-school and summer programs, all of which offer mentorship and/or research experience to underrepresented and underserved students interested in science. Sexual selection is an evolutionary process whereby certain traits are under selective pressure related to competition over access to mates or selection of preferred mates. These mechanisms differ across species, and have resulted in sex differences in non-neurological traits (e.g. body size, hair color). Limited evidence suggests that sexual selection may also influence brain evolution and that these selective pressures may have been particularly strong on the brain during human evolution. The researchers will collect new neurobiological data in female and male primate brains to characterize species-specific sex differences in brain region volumes, sulcal morphology, and gene expression using phylogenetic comparative methods and differential expression analyses. They will then test for correlates of within-species variation in brain sex differences using two large datasets, including chimpanzee sulcal morphology and rhesus macaque brain gene expression, which also contain matching behavioral data.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.