Sex differences in contextual pattern separation, neurogenesis, and functional connectivity within the limbic system.

These results highlight the importance of studying sex differences in fear memory and the contribution of adult neurogenesis to the neuronal network and may contribute to differences in susceptibility to fear-related disorders such as post-traumatic stress disorder. Highlights Female rats, but not male rats, show faster discrimination during a contextual pattern separation task. Three-week-old adult-born neurons are more active in response to fear memory in females compared to males. Females had greater neural activation compared to males in the frontal cortex and dorsal CA1 region of the hippocampus in response to fear memory. Males and females show distinct patterns in functional connectivity for fear memory across limbic regions. Males have many positive correlations between activated new neurons of different ages between the dorsal and ventral hippocampus, while females show more correlations between activated new neurons and other limbic regions.