I'm not sure cerebral vessels have been looked at as much regarding gender differentiated tone...but it does appear that gender differences have an effect on tone in other vessels (please see citation), so one could speculate that gender matters in cerebral vessels as well.

Kawano H, MD, Motoyama T, MD, Kugiyama K, MD, et al. Gender Difference in Improvement of Endothelium-Dependent Vasodilation After Estrogen Supplementation. J Am Coll Cardiol. 1997;30(4):914-919. doi:10.1016/S0735-1097(97)00234-9.

This citation also may help:

Koller A, Toth P, Contribution of Flow-Dependent Vasomotor Mechanisms to the Autoregulation of Cerebral Blood Flow. J Vasc Res 2012;49:375-389

Thank you all for your kind replies.

@ de Vos: I am referring to small cerebral arteries, aca arterioles down to capilaries and not the MCA, however I would assume -and this is highly speculative- that if there is any difference between the genders it would apply to big and small cerebral vessels (?)

@ Miriel: Thank you for these thoughts. I wouldn't consider solely the diameter as the main point of focus as it is impossible to be able to measure that under normal circumstances in humans. The vasomotor tone can be expressed through wall tension, which has been recently modeled as a function of cerebral perfusion pressure, cerebrovascular compliance, resistance and heart rate [Critical closing pressure determined with a model of cerebrovascular impedance. Journal of cerebral blood flow and metabolism 11/2012]. However this modelling wouldn't give any information on differences between genders, i.e. a different structure or a different behaviour. As @Alberding kindly put there might be differences in regards to endothelium and the receptors of different substances (a nice publication that I have found recently: Ahnstedt H, Cao L, Krause DN, Warfvinge K, Sa¨veland H, et al. (2013) Male-Female Differences in Upregulation of Vasoconstrictor Responses in Human Cerebral Arteries. PLoS ONE 8(4): e62698. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0062698.).

@Han: This is an interesting point, is there any publication for that?

I really appreciate all of your responses.

Hello,

I was looking into this problem too ;-). You will find helpful literature in the two articles below.

Gender differences in myogenic regulation along the vascular tree of the gerbil cochlea

K Reimann, G Krishnamoorthy, WG Wier, P Wangemann

PloS one 2011

NOS Inhibition Enhances Myogenic Tone by Increasing Rho-Kinase Mediated Ca2+ Sensitivity in the Male but Not the Female Gerbil Spiral Modiolar Artery

K Reimann, G Krishnamoorthy, P Wangemann

PloS one 2013

I do not think that you find a significant anatomical differences in a smaller vessels but you can definitely find the differences in hormone responses which regulate the tone due to distinct nitric oxide and superoxide production. This is a primary reason we use males in our experiments since we cannot properly compare male to female mice.

Look also at publication below:

Sex differences in intracranial arterial bifurcations.

Gend Med. 2010 Apr;7(2):149-55. doi: 10.1016/j.genm.2010.03.003.

Lindekleiv HM, Valen-Sendstad K, Morgan MK, Mardal KA, Faulder K, Magnus JH, Waterloo K, Romner B, Ingebrigtsen T.

Department of Clinical Medicine, University of Tromsø, Norway.

@ Christoph, what is the organ bath technique? We are investigating this in order to further understand heamodynamic differences in regards to vasomotor tone for the two genders in cases of traumatic brain injury.

@Sergey. Thank you for this answer.I think this is important, in regards to differences in sensitivity responses for the genders, affecting then the vasomotor tone; it all seems then to come down to levels of hormones.