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Cholinergic-estrogen interaction is associated with the effect of education on attenuating cognitive sex differences in a Thai healthy population
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Document Title
Cholinergic-estrogen interaction is associated with the effect of education on attenuating cognitive sex differences in a Thai healthy population
Author
Chen C., Khanthiyong B., Charoenlappanit S., Roytrakul S., Reynolds G.P., Thanoi S., Nudmamud-Thanoi S.
Affiliations
Medical Science Graduate Program, Faculty of Medical Science, Naresuan UniversityPhitsanulok, Thailand; Centre of Excellence in Medical Biotechnology, Faculty of Medical Science, Naresuan UniversityPhitsanulok, Thailand; Faculty of Medicine, Bangkokthonburi UniversityBangkok, Thailand; Functional Proteomics Technology Laboratory, National Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, National Science and Technology Development AgencyPathum Thani, Thailand; Biomolecular Sciences Research Centre, Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield, United Kingdom; School of Medical Sciences, University of PhayaoPhayao, Thailand; Department of Anatomy, Faculty of Medical Science, Naresuan UniversityPhitsanulok, Thailand
Type
Article
Source Title
PloS one
ISSN
19326203
Year
2023
Volume
18
Issue
7
Page
e0278080
Open Access
All Open Access, Gold
Publisher
NLM (Medline)
DOI
10.1371/journal.pone.0278080
Format
Abstract
The development of human brain is shaped by both genetic and environmental factors. Sex differences in cognitive function have been found in humans as a result of sexual dimorphism in neural information transmission. Numerous studies have reported the positive effects of education on cognitive functions. However, little work has investigated the effect of education on attenuating cognitive sex differences and the neural mechanisms behind it based on healthy population. In this study, the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST) was employed to examine sex differences in cognitive function in 135 Thai healthy subjects, and label-free quantitative proteomic method and bioinformatic analysis were used to study sex-specific neurotransmission-related protein expression profiles. The results showed sex differences in two WCST sub-scores: percentage of Total corrects and Total errors in the primary education group (Bayes factor>100) with males performed better, while such differences eliminated in secondary and tertiary education levels. Moreover, 11 differentially expressed proteins (DEPs) between men and women (FDR<0.1) were presented in both education groups, with majority of them upregulated in females. Half of those DEPs interacted directly with nAChR3, whereas the other DEPs were indirectly connected to the cholinergic pathways through interaction with estrogen. These findings provided a preliminary indication that a cholinergic-estrogen interaction relates to, and might underpin, the effect of education on attenuating cognitive sex differences in a Thai healthy population. Copyright: ? 2023 Chen et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
License
CC BY
Rights
Authors
Publication Source
WOS