Chair, Department of Pharmacology, University of Maryland

Sex Differences in the Brain: Intersection of the Endocrine, Immune and Nervous System

The relative risk of developing a neuropsychiatric or neurological disorder is not the same for males and females, with boys being substantially more likely to be diagnosed with developmental disorders such as autism, attention and hyperactivity disorders and early onset schizophrenia while woman are more likely to experience major depression, anxiety, eating disorders, autoimmunity, Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia. The substantial gender bias in disease risk which varies across the life span compels us to understand the etiology of sex differences in the nervous system. Using the laboratory rat we have discovered novel mechanisms involving the innate immune system of the brain and its regulation by steroid hormones which differ in developing males and females and enduringly sculpt the neuroarchitecture to modulate social behaviors in adolescence and adulthood. The multiplicity of factors engaged in neurodevelopment of sex differences increases the potential nodes for dysregulation and therapeutic intervention.

Biography:

Margaret (Peg) McCarthy received a PhD from the Institute of Animal Behavior at Rutgers University, Newark NJ, completed postdoctoral training at Rockefeller University and was a National Research Council Fellow at NIH-NIAAA before joining the faculty of the University of Maryland School of Medicine in 1993.  She was a Professor in the Department of Physiology before becoming the Chair of the Department of Pharmacology in 2011.

McCarthy has a long-standing interest in the cellular mechanisms establishing sex differences in the brain.  She uses a combined behavioral and mechanistic approach in the laboratory rat to understand both normal brain development and how these processes might go selectively awry in males versus females. She has published over 200 peer-reviewed manuscripts and has been cited close to 10,000 times.

Margaret is the inaugural Director of the University of Maryland School - Medicine Institute for Neuroscience Discovery (UM-MIND). She is a Reviewing Editor for Journal of Neuroscience and eLife and a fellow with AAAS and ACNP, former President of Organization for the Study of Sex Differences and current President of the Society for Behavioral Neuroendocrinology.