Project 422852

Neurodevelopmental disorders (NDD), characterized by early-onset atypical behaviour and brain development, are relatively common and constitute a critical, but often overlooked, developmental background that affects health and wellbeing. NDD have a male-predominant prevalence. The accumulated male-focused research to date, particularly due to male-bias lens and sex/gender-ignorance, has led to ungrounded assumptions that findings about NDD learned from a male-sex-lens can be generalized to people of all sexes and genders. To mitigate these sex and gender biases, this Chair program will establish an integrated clinical-research program that clarifies how sex and gender affect and intersect with the most common NDD (i.e. autism, ADHD, intellectual disability, genetic syndromes). The research will unveil sex and gender related subtleties of behavioural presentations of NDD to aid clinical recognition (by an innovative research approach working with individuals with "subthreshold" NDD), and explore the brain and cognitive mechanisms of the "female-protective effect" of NDD (by utilizing three innovative designs studying subthreshold individuals, infants carrying risk genes for NDD, and families with multiple members with autism). The program will support next generation health researchers and clinicians by bringing sex and gender science perspectives and methodologies into NDD research and practice. The knowledge translation activities will improve sex- and gender-sensitive assessment and care for individuals with NDD, especially girls, women, and gender-diverse individuals, who have been underserved in the past, and even currently. The ultimate goal is to achieve and ensure sex and gender equity across all domains of research and clinical practice related to NDD.