Epidemiological sex differences in anxiety disorders and major depression are well characterized. Yet the circuits and mechanisms that contribute to these differences are understudied, because preclinical studies have historically excluded female rodents. This oversight is beginning to be addressed, and recent studies that include male and female rodents are identifying sex differences in neurobiological processes that underlie features of these disorders, including conflict anxiety, fear processing, arousal, social avoidance, learned helplessness and anhedonia. These findings allow us to conceptualize various types of sex differences in the brain, which in turn have broader implications for considering sex as a biological variable. Importantly, comparing the sexes could aid in the discovery of novel therapeutics.

焦虑症和重度抑郁症的流行病学性别差异已得到很好的表征。然而，导致这些差异的回路和机制尚未得到充分研究，因为临床前研究历来都将雌性啮齿动物排除在外。这种疏忽开始得到解决，最近包括雄性和雌性啮齿动物在内的研究正在确定神经生物学过程中的性别差异，这些差异是这些疾病特征的基础，包括冲突焦虑、恐惧处理、觉醒、社交回避、习得性无助和快感缺乏。这些发现使我们能够将大脑中各种类型的性别差异概念化，这反过来对将性别视为生物变量具有更广泛的意义。重要的是，比较性别可能有助于发现新疗法。