Hengjun J. Kim1, Youngkyu Song1,
Gyunggoo Cho1, Namkug Kim2
1Division of Magnetic
Resonance, Korea Basic Science Institute, Ochang, Chungbuk, Korea, Republic
of; 2Radiology, University of Ulsan College of Medicine, Asan
Medical Center, Seoul, Korea, Republic of
Since the morphological difference between sexes in the medial preoptic area had been reported, sex differences of the rodent brain had been observed in numerous regions. Here we show the sex difference of regional activation in the rat brain using manganese-enhanced MRI. We found that male rats had enhanced brain activation in the olfactory system including lateral olfactory tract, piriform, and amygdala, while female rats had enhanced brain activation in the visual system including primary and secondary visual cortex, and superior colliculus.