16 Feb
1997
16 Feb
'97
4:12 p.m.
Below is the abstract of a forthcoming BBS target article on:
OVARIAN HORMONES IN BRAIN SEXUAL DIFFERENTIATION
by Roslyn Holly Fitch and Victor H. Denenberg
This article has been accepted for publication in Behavioral and Brain
Sciences (BBS), an international, interdisciplinary journal providing
Open Peer Commentary on important and controversial current research in
the biobehavioral and cognitive sciences.
Commentators must be BBS Associates or nominated by a BBS Associate. To
be considered as a commentator for this article, to suggest other
appropriate commentators, or for information about how to become a BBS
Associate, please send EMAIL to:
bbs(a)cogsci.soton.ac.uk
or write to:
Behavioral and Brain Sciences
Department of Psychology
University of Southampton
Highfield, Southampton
SO17 1BJ UNITED KINGDOM
http://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/bbs/
http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/bbs/
ftp://ftp.princeton.edu/pub/harnad/BBS/
ftp://ftp.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/pub/bbs/
gopher://gopher.princeton.edu:70/11/.libraries/.pujournals
If you are not a BBS Associate, please send your CV and the name of a
BBS Associate (there are currently over 10,000 worldwide) who is
familiar with your work. All past BBS authors, referees and commentators
are eligible to become BBS Associates.
To help us put together a balanced list of commentators, please give
some indication of the aspects of the topic on which you would bring
your areas of expertise to bear if you were selected as a commentator.
An electronic draft of the full text is available for inspection
with a WWW browser, anonymous ftp or gopher according to the
instructions that follow after the abstract.
____________________________________________________________________
A ROLE FOR OVARIAN HORMONES IN SEXUAL DIFFERENTIATION
OF THE BRAIN
Roslyn Holly Fitch and Victor H. Denenberg
Biobehavioral Sciences Graduate Degree Program
University of Connecticut
Storrs, CT 06269-4154
Dberg(a)UCONNVM.UCONN.EDU
KEYWORDS: Activational effects, androgens, corpus callosum,
estrogen, female default hypothesis, feminization,
masculinization, organizational effects, sensitive periods,
sexual differentiation, testosterone
ABSTRACT: Historically, studies of the role of endogenous
hormones in developmental differentiation of the sexes have
suggested that mammalian sexual differentiation is primarily
mediated by testicular androgens, and that exposure to
androgens in early life leads to a male brain as defined by
neuroanatomy and behavior. The female brain has been assumed to
develop via a hormonal default mechanism, in the absence of
androgen or other hormones. The role of ovarian hormones in
female sexual differentiation may be complementary to
androgen-mediated masculinization because the feminizing
effects of ovarian steroids are only found in the absence of
perinatal androgen. Ovarian hormones have significant effects
on the development of a sexually dimorphic cortical structure,
the corpus callosum, which is larger in male than female rats.
In the females, removal of the ovaries as late as Day 16
increases the cross-sectional area of the adult corpus
callosum. Treatment with low-dose estradiol starting on Day 25
inhibits this effect. Female callosa are also enlarged by a
combination of daily postnatal handling and exogenous
testosterone administered prior to Day 8. The effects of
androgen treatment are expressed early in development, with
males and testosterone-treated females having larger callosa
than control females as early as Day 30. The effects of
ovariectomy do not appear until after Day 55. These findings
are consistent with other evidence of a later sensitive period
for ovarian feminization than androgenic masculinization.
--------------------------------------------------------------
To help you decide whether you would be an appropriate commentator for
this article, an electronic draft is retrievable from the World Wide
Web or by anonymous ftp or gopher from the US or UK BBS Archive.
Ftp instructions follow below. Please do not prepare a commentary on
this draft. Just let us know, after having inspected it, what relevant
expertise you feel you would bring to bear on what aspect of the
article.
The URLs you can use to get to the BBS Archive:
http://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/bbs/
http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/bbs/Archive/bbs.fitch.html
ftp://ftp.princeton.edu/pub/harnad/BBS/bbs.fitch
ftp://ftp.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/pub/bbs/Archive/bbs.fitch
gopher://gopher.princeton.edu:70/11/.libraries/.pujournals
To retrieve a file by ftp from an Internet site, type either:
ftp ftp.princeton.edu
or
ftp 128.112.128.1
When you are asked for your login, type:
anonymous
Enter password as queried (your password is your actual userid:
yourlogin(a)yourhost.whatever.whatever - be sure to include the "@")
cd /pub/harnad/BBS
To show the available files, type:
ls
Next, retrieve the file you want with (for example):
get bbs.fitch
When you have the file(s) you want, type:
quit