男性和女性在许多精神和神经系统疾病的风险、患病率以及病程进展方面表现出显著差异。例如，精神分裂症、注意缺陷多动障碍（ADHD）和帕金森病在男性中更为常见，而情绪障碍和阿尔茨海默病则更频繁地影响女性。理解这些性别差异背后的分子机制，有助于识别促进疾病抵抗力的相关通路，从而可能成为治疗靶点。DeCasien 等人发表在最新一期《科学》杂志上的文章报道了他们的发现。他们系统性地研究了性别如何在单细胞水平上影响神经基因表达，结果发现，在六个皮层区域中，超过3000个基因在至少一个区域表现出性别偏倚的表达。大多数这些基因并不位于性染色体上。这些发现为理解为何两性在多种脑部疾病的易感性上存在差异提供了重要资源。
Men and women show striking differences in risk, prevalence, and progression of many psychiatric and neurological disorders. For example, schizophrenia, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and Parkinson’s disease are more common in men, whereas mood disorders and Alzheimer’s disease affect women more frequently. Understanding the molecular mechanisms underlying such sex differences could help to identify the pathways that promote resilience to disease and thus might be targeted therapeutically. On page 274 of this issue, DeCasien et al. report a systematic examination of how sex influences neural gene expression at the single-cell level. They found that more than 3000 genes show sex-biased expression in at least one of six cortical regions. Most of these genes were not located on the sex chromosomes. The findings provide a resource for understanding why the sexes differ in susceptibility to many brain disorders.