Gender Differences in Elements of the Brain Regions

摘要

To elucidate whether there were gender differences in the brain regions or not, the authors investigated gender differences in both three white matters and eleven gray matters of human brains from a viewpoint of element contents. After ordinary dissections at Nara Medical University, Japan, were finished, both the white matters of the corpus callosum, anterior commissure, and fornix and the gray matters of the hippocampus, dentate gyrus, olfactory bulb and tract, caudate nucleus, putamen, globus patlidus, amygdaloid body, mammillary body, lateral geniculate body, pineal body, and superior colliculus were resected from the brains. The brain samples were treated with 99.5% ethanol three times to remove lipids. After incinerating with nitric acid and perchloric acid, seven element contents of Ca, P, S, Mg, Zn, Fe, and Na were determined by inductively coupled plasma-atomic emission spectrometry (ICPS-7500; Shimadzu, Kyoto, Japan). Significant gender differences in the elements were found in the following five brain regions: the Zn content of the anterior commissure; the Ca, P, and Zn contents of the olfactory bulb and tract; the S content of the dentate gyrus; the Ca content of the caudate nucleus; and the Ca and Zn contents of the lateral geniculate body. The physiological significance of their gender differences in these brain regions remains to be solved.