KAPA65, PIXABAY
The physiological differences between males and females go far beyond reproduction; they may even include how an animal processes pain, according to a study published today (June 29) in Nature Neuroscience.
“This is not the usual type of sex difference that people usually report,” said study coauthor Jeffrey Mogil, a pain geneticist at McGill University in Montreal. His team found that male and female mice use completely different cell types to relay pain signals from the immune system to the nervous system.
Scientists who study the interactions between immune cells and neurons have long turned to microglia, macrophage-like immune cells that reside in the central nervous system, as the key intermediate between the two systems. In 2011, Mogil’s team reported that a protein found on ...
