On the Basis of Sex: Impact on Traumatic Brain Injury

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a major public health concern worldwide. Those who experience one or more TBIs have a high prevalence of disabilities across age groups. While more severe TBIs result in more obvious symptoms, most TBIs are mild with potentially long-term "invisible" symptoms. People exposed to mild TBI are more prone to develop neuropsychiatric, neurobiological and physiological disorders. Most of these disorders, by themselves, are sexually dimorphic in that the sequelae of dysfunction differ between sexes. Recently, there is a growing body of work showing that sex is a critical factor when it comes to the effects of mild TBI. However, the neurological underpinnings of these sex differences are still unknown. This is mostly because of the lack of experimental and clinical data including both sexes. Therefore, it is important to understand how males and females may respond differently to TBI.

The focus of this Research Topic is to address significant gaps in the literature that span from studies with animal models to clinical research. While the focus of this Topic will be TBI, we feel that by opening the issue to the broader topic of neural injury we will be able to seek reviews that will bring new thinking to potential treatments for TBI. The reviews we seek include those that address sex dependent differences in the manifestation of symptoms and response to interventions post neural injury, as well as provide potential therapeutic approaches post injury. Ultimately, the goal of this Research Topic is to bring together experts from a wide perspective, including understudied areas such as neuroendocrine, physiological and behavioral backgrounds to discuss how gender/sex may play a role in TBI.