GENDER DIFFERENCES IN THE BRAIN AND BEHAVIOR

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This proposal requests funds to sponsor a one-day symposium entitled "Gender differences in the brain and behavior". The satellite meeting will be held one day prior to the 1999 International Behavioral Neuroscience Society (IBNS) meeting, on June 23,1999 in Nancy, France. The association with this meeting of international behavioral neuroscientists will promote attendance, facilitate advertising, and promote research collaborations beyond US boundaries. The meeting is designed to bring together noted researchers analyzing sex and gender differences with biological, behavioral or cognitive outcomes. The focus of the meeting is on the neurochemical and/or neuroanatomical bases for these behavioral sex-related differences, with a particular focus on drugs of abuse (including alcohol). The emphasis for speaker selection was to facilitate discussion related to the similarities and differences between the sexes in neural systems which underlie behaviors relevant to drug abuse issues, and particularly the role of stress in affecting responses to drugs of abuse including psychostimulants, benzodiazepines, nicotine and alcohol. The symposium is organized around four major themes, including 1) Gender, anxiety, and anxiolytics (Benzodiazepines and alcohol) 2) Gender and stress-related hormones, 3)Gender and drugs of abuse, and 4) Effects of sex hormones on behavior. This will be an important venue through which these scientists can discuss their findings relevant to sex and gender differences, and provide a forum for interaction with the international neuroscience community. Although the symposium concentrates on the basic aspects of this topic, we have included one session focusing on the more clinical aspects of potential differences (session 4, organized by N. Ostrowski of Lilly). The main objective of this meeting is to discuss current findings relevant to sex differences in brain and behavior, and their implications for future directions in this important field. Given the recent emphasis on gender issues by NIH, the proposed symposium will provide an excellent opportunity at this critical junction to assess similarities and differences between genders, and the neurochemical or neuroanatomical systems which might be relevant to future basic and clinical research.