The neuroscience community had largely considered any observed sex-associated differences in cognition and behavior in humans to be due to the effects of cultural influences. His plan was to learn what he could about the activity of genes tied to behaviors that differ between the sexes, then use that knowledge to help identify the neuronal circuits - clusters of nerve cells in close communication with one another - underlying those behaviors.Īt the time, this was not a universally popular idea.
These circuits should differ depending on which sex you’re looking at.” “They’re innate rather than learned - at least in animals - so the circuitry involved ought to be developmentally hard-wired into the brain. “These behaviors are essential for survival and propagation,” says Shah, MD, PhD, now a Stanford professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and of neurobiology. So, he zeroed in on sex-associated behavioral differences in mating, parenting and aggression. “I wanted to find and explore neural circuits that regulate specific behaviors,” says Shah, then a newly minted Caltech PhD who was beginning a postdoctoral fellowship at Columbia. When Nirao Shah decided in 1998 to study sex-based differences in the brain using up-to-the-minute molecular tools, he didn’t have a ton of competition.
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