Gender

Recent articles

Illustrated portrait of Catherine Dulac.

Male and female brains, Proust, and Catherine Dulac

The 2021 Breakthrough Prize winner explains how reading widely shaped her worldview, and discusses the vomeronasal organ.

By Brady Huggett
1 August 2024 | 81 min listen
Illustration of X and Y chromosomes against a psychedelic, checkered pattern.

Accounting for a mosaic of sex differences: Q&A with Nicola Grissom

Breaking the binary view of sex traits can enable researchers to represent the broader complexity of behavior and cognition.

By Olivia Gieger
10 July 2024 | 7 min read
A child uses a tablet device

New tablet-based tools to spot autism draw excitement — and questions

Handheld devices promise to bring autism detection home, but many researchers urge caution.

By Charles Q. Choi
4 January 2024 | 8 min read
A person stands in front of a neatly organized dresser drawer.

Teasing apart insistence on sameness with Mirko Uljarević

The hallmark autism trait has multiple facets, Uljarević and his colleagues have found.

By Lauren Schenkman
30 October 2023 | 6 min read
Photograph of a family of rhesus macaque monkeys.

Father’s genes may drive sociability in male monkeys

The findings in rhesus macaque monkeys may provide clues to sex differences in the heredity of social behavior in people.

By Charles Q. Choi
18 August 2023 | 3 min read
Photograph of two women of color working with a white male colleague in a laboratory.

Black and women researchers are less likely to hold three or more NIH grants simultaneously

A growing proportion of researchers has reached such “super principal investigator” status, but the distribution is not even across demographic groups.

By Maaisha Osman
5 May 2023 | 4 min read
Illustration of a brain.

Cortical differences in autism vary by sex

Compared with their non-autistic peers, young autistic girls have a thicker cortex that thins more quickly with age.

By Giorgia Guglielmi
4 May 2023 | 2 min read
Out-of-focus photograph of a young girl sitting at a desk using an eraser.

U.S. study charts changing prevalence of profound and non-profound autism

Profound autism prevalence rose from 2002 to 2016, though not nearly as much as non-profound autism did.

By Angie Voyles Askham
19 April 2023 | 6 min read
Illustration of a diverse group of bodies floating in space.

New measure characterizes gender diversity in study participants

The Gender Self-Report could help autism researchers include more gender-diverse people across a range of ages and neurotypes in their work.

By Emmet Fraizer
12 April 2023 | 5 min read
Illustration of hybrid objects: part light bulb, part lab vial, some in blue and some in red to signify null and replicated results.

Null & Noteworthy: Intervention flops; neural noise; gender care

This edition takes aim at the autism-intervention evidence base with a slew of null results, plus findings that challenge a prevailing autism brain theory.

By Laura Dattaro
18 January 2023 | 5 min read

Explore more from The Transmitter

Vasopressin boosts sociability in solitary monkeys

Inhaling the hormone did not increase aggression in unsociable rhesus macaques and appears to help the animals remember faces and reciprocate friendly behaviors.

By Charles Q. Choi
25 November 2024 | 5 min read
Illustration of a funnel taking abstract shapes in at the top and spouting an organized flow of shapes out at the bottom.

To keep or not to keep: Neurophysiology’s data dilemma

An exponential growth in data size presents neuroscientists with a significant challenge: Should we be keeping all raw data or focusing on processed datasets? I asked experimentalists and theorists for their thoughts.

By Nima Dehghani
25 November 2024 | 5 min read
Piggy bank with half of its body replaced by a brain.

Neuroscientists reeling from past cuts advocate for more BRAIN Initiative funding

The director of the U.S. National Institutes of Health calls BRAIN a “high priority” but acknowledges that difficult decisions lie ahead if federal budgets remain flat.

By Angie Voyles Askham
22 November 2024 | 5 min read