Focus on females: a less biased approach for studying strategies and mechanisms of memory

Recent work on sex differences in learning and memory has demonstrated that females and males differ in cognitive and behavioral strategies, as well as neural mechanisms required to learn, retrieve, and express memory. Although our understanding of the mechanisms of memory is highly sophisticated, this work is based on male animals. As such, the study of female memory is narrowed to a comparison with behavior and mechanisms defined in males, resulting in findings of male-specific mechanisms but little understanding of how females learn and store information. In this paper, we discuss a female-focused framework and experimental approaches to deepen our understanding of the strategies and neural mechanisms engaged by females (and males) in learning, consolidation, and retrieval of memory.