Understanding how sex differences interact with other factors that lead to vulnerability or resilience for neuropsychiatric disorders could throw unexpected light on relevant pathways. A consequence of sex differences in brain development is the possibility that treatments may not have the same effects in males and females, which may be important to explore further for the goal of optimizing individual treatment strategies (Hodes, Yang, Van Kooy, Santollo, & Shors, 2009). Although a better understanding of how sex differences develop during childhood and adolescence may eventually help to guide interventions such as treatment and education, it should be remembered that all the findings discussed in this paper represent group averages with substantial overlap between groups. Causality has not yet been established between any normal variation of brain development and functional ability. Neuroimaging findings should be taken as clues pointing us towards different processes affecting male and female brain development rather than definitive statements about the capabilities of male or female individuals
