Quantifying Sex Differences in Behavior in the Era of “Big” Data
- 4 October 2021
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Biology
- Vol. 14 (5), a039164
- https://doi.org/10.1101/cshperspect.a039164
Abstract
Sex differences are commonly observed in behaviors that are closely linked to adaptive function, but sex differences can also be observed in behavioral “building blocks” such as locomotor activity and reward processing. Modern neuroscientific inquiry, in pursuit of generalizable principles of functioning across sexes, has often ignored these more subtle sex differences in behavioral building blocks that may result from differences in these behavioral building blocks. A frequent assumption is that there is a default (often male) way to perform a behavior. This approach misses fundamental drivers of individual variability within and between sexes. Incomplete behavioral descriptions of both sexes can lead to an overreliance on reduced “single-variable” readouts of complex behaviors, the design of which may be based on male-biased samples. Here, we advocate that the incorporation of new machine-learning tools for collecting and analyzing multimodal “big behavior” data allows for a more holistic and richer approach to the quantification of behavior in both sexes. These new tools make behavioral description more robust and replicable across laboratories and species, and may open up new lines of neuroscientific inquiry by facilitating the discovery of novel behavioral states. Having more accurate measures of behavioral diversity in males and females could serve as a hypothesis generator for where and when we should look in the brain for meaningful neural differences.Keywords
This publication has 83 references indexed in Scilit:
- The Structure and Usage of Female and Male Mouse Ultrasonic Vocalizations Reveal only Minor DifferencesPLOS ONE, 2012
- The effect of escapable versus inescapable social defeat on conditioned defeat and social recognition in Syrian hamstersPhysiology & Behavior, 2012
- A standardized protocol for repeated social defeat stress in miceNature Protocols, 2011
- Sex Differences in Social Interaction Behavior Following Social Defeat Stress in the Monogamous California Mouse (Peromyscus californicus)PLOS ONE, 2011
- Functional identification of an aggression locus in the mouse hypothalamusNature, 2011
- Ultrasonic Songs of Male MicePLoS Biology, 2005
- Sex differences in performance in the Morris water maze and the effects of initial nonstationary hidden platform training.Behavioral Neuroscience, 1996
- Androgenic induction of brain sexual dimorphism depends on photoperiod in meadow volesPhysiology & Behavior, 1993
- Sex differences in amphetamine-induced locomotor activity in adult rats: Role of testosterone exposure in the neonatal periodPharmacology Biochemistry and Behavior, 1993
- An empirical comparison of focal and ad libitum scoring with commentary on instantaneous scans, all occurrence and one-zero techniquesAnimal Behaviour, 1991