Big data approaches to identifying sex differences in long-term memory.

Abstract

Whether in neurotransmitters or large-scale circuits, sex differences have long been of interest in neuroscience. Spets and Slotnick conducted a meta-analysis of fMRI studies of long-term memory to identify sex differences in brain-behavior associations, demonstrating that sex differences are pervasive across many sub-types of long-term memory. Meta-analyses are a workhorse toward aggregating larger sample sizes to arrive at a more comprehensive understanding of such topics. However, more research is crucial to elucidate complex relationships in how fMRI signals translate to behavioral outcomes. We propose big data and open-science as a solution toward finding robust sex differences in brain-behavior associations.