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Sexual Dimorphism in the Human Olfactory Bulb: Females Have More Neurons and Glial Cells than Males

Sex differences in the human olfactory function reportedly exist for olfactory sensitivity, odorant identification and memory, and tasks in which odors are rated based on psychological features such as familiarity, intensity, pleasantness, and others. Which might be the neural bases for these behavi...

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Autores principales: Oliveira-Pinto, Ana V., Santos, Raquel M., Coutinho, Renan A., Oliveira, Lays M., Santos, Gláucia B., Alho, Ana T. L., Leite, Renata E. P., Farfel, José M., Suemoto, Claudia K., Grinberg, Lea T., Pasqualucci, Carlos A., Jacob-Filho, Wilson, Lent, Roberto
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2014
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4221136/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25372872
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0111733
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author Oliveira-Pinto, Ana V.
Santos, Raquel M.
Coutinho, Renan A.
Oliveira, Lays M.
Santos, Gláucia B.
Alho, Ana T. L.
Leite, Renata E. P.
Farfel, José M.
Suemoto, Claudia K.
Grinberg, Lea T.
Pasqualucci, Carlos A.
Jacob-Filho, Wilson
Lent, Roberto
author_facet Oliveira-Pinto, Ana V.
Santos, Raquel M.
Coutinho, Renan A.
Oliveira, Lays M.
Santos, Gláucia B.
Alho, Ana T. L.
Leite, Renata E. P.
Farfel, José M.
Suemoto, Claudia K.
Grinberg, Lea T.
Pasqualucci, Carlos A.
Jacob-Filho, Wilson
Lent, Roberto
author_sort Oliveira-Pinto, Ana V.
collection PubMed
description Sex differences in the human olfactory function reportedly exist for olfactory sensitivity, odorant identification and memory, and tasks in which odors are rated based on psychological features such as familiarity, intensity, pleasantness, and others. Which might be the neural bases for these behavioral differences? The number of cells in olfactory regions, and especially the number of neurons, may represent a more accurate indicator of the neural machinery than volume or weight, but besides gross volume measures of the human olfactory bulb, no systematic study of sex differences in the absolute number of cells has yet been undertaken. In this work, we investigate a possible sexual dimorphism in the olfactory bulb, by quantifying postmortem material from 7 men and 11 women (ages 55–94 years) with the isotropic fractionator, an unbiased and accurate method to estimate absolute cell numbers in brain regions. Female bulbs weighed 0.132 g in average, while male bulbs weighed 0.137 g, a non-significant difference; however, the total number of cells was 16.2 million in females, and 9.2 million in males, a significant difference of 43.2%. The number of neurons in females reached 6.9 million, being no more than 3.5 million in males, a difference of 49.3%. The number of non-neuronal cells also proved higher in women than in men: 9.3 million and 5.7 million, respectively, a significant difference of 38.7%. The same differences remained when corrected for mass. Results demonstrate a sex-related difference in the absolute number of total, neuronal and non-neuronal cells, favoring women by 40–50%. It is conceivable that these differences in quantitative cellularity may have functional impact, albeit difficult to infer how exactly this would be, without knowing the specific circuits cells make. However, the reported advantage of women as compared to men may stimulate future work on sex dimorphism of synaptic microcircuitry in the olfactory bulb.
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spelling pubmed-42211362014-11-12 Sexual Dimorphism in the Human Olfactory Bulb: Females Have More Neurons and Glial Cells than Males Oliveira-Pinto, Ana V. Santos, Raquel M. Coutinho, Renan A. Oliveira, Lays M. Santos, Gláucia B. Alho, Ana T. L. Leite, Renata E. P. Farfel, José M. Suemoto, Claudia K. Grinberg, Lea T. Pasqualucci, Carlos A. Jacob-Filho, Wilson Lent, Roberto PLoS One Research Article Sex differences in the human olfactory function reportedly exist for olfactory sensitivity, odorant identification and memory, and tasks in which odors are rated based on psychological features such as familiarity, intensity, pleasantness, and others. Which might be the neural bases for these behavioral differences? The number of cells in olfactory regions, and especially the number of neurons, may represent a more accurate indicator of the neural machinery than volume or weight, but besides gross volume measures of the human olfactory bulb, no systematic study of sex differences in the absolute number of cells has yet been undertaken. In this work, we investigate a possible sexual dimorphism in the olfactory bulb, by quantifying postmortem material from 7 men and 11 women (ages 55–94 years) with the isotropic fractionator, an unbiased and accurate method to estimate absolute cell numbers in brain regions. Female bulbs weighed 0.132 g in average, while male bulbs weighed 0.137 g, a non-significant difference; however, the total number of cells was 16.2 million in females, and 9.2 million in males, a significant difference of 43.2%. The number of neurons in females reached 6.9 million, being no more than 3.5 million in males, a difference of 49.3%. The number of non-neuronal cells also proved higher in women than in men: 9.3 million and 5.7 million, respectively, a significant difference of 38.7%. The same differences remained when corrected for mass. Results demonstrate a sex-related difference in the absolute number of total, neuronal and non-neuronal cells, favoring women by 40–50%. It is conceivable that these differences in quantitative cellularity may have functional impact, albeit difficult to infer how exactly this would be, without knowing the specific circuits cells make. However, the reported advantage of women as compared to men may stimulate future work on sex dimorphism of synaptic microcircuitry in the olfactory bulb. Public Library of Science 2014-11-05 /pmc/articles/PMC4221136/ /pubmed/25372872 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0111733 Text en © 2014 Oliveira-Pinto et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Oliveira-Pinto, Ana V.
Santos, Raquel M.
Coutinho, Renan A.
Oliveira, Lays M.
Santos, Gláucia B.
Alho, Ana T. L.
Leite, Renata E. P.
Farfel, José M.
Suemoto, Claudia K.
Grinberg, Lea T.
Pasqualucci, Carlos A.
Jacob-Filho, Wilson
Lent, Roberto
Sexual Dimorphism in the Human Olfactory Bulb: Females Have More Neurons and Glial Cells than Males
title Sexual Dimorphism in the Human Olfactory Bulb: Females Have More Neurons and Glial Cells than Males
title_full Sexual Dimorphism in the Human Olfactory Bulb: Females Have More Neurons and Glial Cells than Males
title_fullStr Sexual Dimorphism in the Human Olfactory Bulb: Females Have More Neurons and Glial Cells than Males
title_full_unstemmed Sexual Dimorphism in the Human Olfactory Bulb: Females Have More Neurons and Glial Cells than Males
title_short Sexual Dimorphism in the Human Olfactory Bulb: Females Have More Neurons and Glial Cells than Males
title_sort sexual dimorphism in the human olfactory bulb: females have more neurons and glial cells than males
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4221136/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25372872
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0111733
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