MRI scan can show if you are transgender. Apparently

[Guadeloupe]

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/05/22/transgender-brain-scans-promised-study-shows-structural-differences/amp/

The media likes to get the pop culture breaking news interpretations out there first before the details qualify the assertions they make for purposes of sensationalism.
Can't think why we don't trust the media.

HotRocker
Gender dysphoria aside, I wonder how much internalised homophobia contributes to transgenderism

We'll never know based on these sorts of studies, which always (as far as I've seen) only include transsexuals diagnosed with gender dysphoria. Which is logical, because you need to clearly define your subjects, and that would be much more difficult if you included self-identified trans people.

Given that they can't reliably identify your sex from an MRI (brains all mosiacs), and hat-size probably as good an indication as anything, I wouldn't worry about the diagnostic potential. But TRAs DO seem to consistently cherry-pick and misrepresent the actual science of these papers, so I think we do need to keep up to date on this stuff.

I wonder how much internalised homophobia contributes to transgenderism
Seems a totally reasonable hypothesis/question, needs to be pushed that current studies can't answer it.

My feeling is we need more than one axis here, other than sex, just so we can get away from what TRAs want which is if you are not totally aligned with the results for your actual sex, then almost always the only place you end up is more female than the average male...........
Although reminds me strongly of Cordelia Fine and earlier neurosexism, where gay men were at one point seen as ultra-masculine, but then later more feminine.

Too one-dimensional , flatten everything onto ONE axis, and study enough brain regions and sub-regions, and not hard to see how you get these simplistic results. Especially with small datasets, not proper training and test sets, a press eager to splash out a simple sexy headline.....................

I wonder how much internalised homophobia contributes to transgenderism

To 'transsexualism', a lot. But that is because we live in a hetero-patriarchy. Not so much for transgenders though, who claim to be 'lesbians' (but in reality, still heterosexual males).

Years ago, I remember being perplexed/confused at the TIM statement of "and my sexual orientation changed" - the TIM was saying 'before transition I slept with women (a heterosexual male) now after transition, I sleep with women (therefore a lesbian female). It does your head in this stuff, it really does. The TIM's 'sexual orientation' (ie attraction) had not changed one iota.

Oh, if they ever do find the 'trans gene' (and not just a small sample of what happens to a dead male brain on estrogen), then the T will have far more to worry about than so-called 'TERFs'. A little thing called eugenics will come into play. And watch them 'detransition'.

But for now, they are useful to the patriarchy.

A quotation from Julie Bakker's article abstract: "The concept of gender identity is uniquely human."

Well, at least in future we can quote this statement as a response to the claims that are made by some supporters of transgenderism ideology that allegedly transgender fish have relevance to transgender humans.

TrM, HeW and HoW all showed similar sex traits and scores differently to TrW, HeM and HoM.

The link in the post by bd67th showed the only difference between GD people and non GD people was the little bit of the brain that affects how the patients perceive themselves.

The important question is "did they control for sexual orientation?" because another study did and <a class="break-all" href="http://go.mumsnet.com/?xs=1&id=470X1554755&url=www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-17352-8" target="_blank">showed that gender dysphoric people have the same brain as non-GD of the same sex with one consistent differencee^.

Exactly.

Wasn't there a study that found there was a difference in the brains of people who declared trans, from other people's brains, and it was the same feature found in people who spend an unusual amount of time thinking about themselves.

There was one that found a high comorbidity with narcissistic personality disorder. No comment.

There was the brain scan done on MB on the program she did last week that suggested they had a Trans brain. I took that with a pinch of salt too.

Oh, if they ever do find the 'trans gene' (and not just a small sample of what happens to a dead male brain on estrogen), then the T will have far more to worry about than so-called 'TERFs'. A little thing called eugenics will come into play. And watch them 'detransition'.

I'm sorry, but that's just silly.

First, it's a trans gene will ever be found. There is a study that reported that among identical twins where one twin is transsexual, the other twin is also transsexual in 20% of cases, suggesting a high degree of heritability, but not that there is likely to be 'a gene'. It is likely that variants in a number of genes contribute.

Second, why invoke eugenics? There being a genetic contribution to a condition doesn't make people likely to be subject to eugenics. Certainly not in western societies. Some people are genetically pre-disposed to cancer, or schizophrenia. I don't see anyone clamouring for eugenic policies. I sincerely hope that we are beyond that level of nazi thinking (and this is a rare occasion where comparison with the nazis is appropriate).

But if they are finding female brain structures in males, and male brains in females, then surely both sexes can have both types of brains?????

Surely that's why gender identity (and identity in general) is more complex than just brain structure? It would make sense that sexed brain structure is only one element that predisposes a person to develop a particular sense of themselves in terms of their gender. Along with their physical body, environment, sexuality, society etc.

There was the brain scan done on MB on the program she did last week that suggested they had a Trans brain.

That is who I was thinking of. An MRI tech debunked the claim that it was the scan that showed they were transgender.
Cokie's Law: It doesn't matter if it is true or not. Its out there.

In looking at the abstract available, I see no mention of whether any of these trans-adolescents are being treated with puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones. I would absolutely disregard ANY neuroimaging studies that include any individual (adult, child or teen, male, female, gay, straight) that is on or has been on GnRH agonists or cross sex hormones.

"Oh, if they ever do find the 'trans gene' (and not just a small sample of what happens to a dead male brain on estrogen), then the T will have far more to worry about than so-called 'TERFs'. A little thing called eugenics will come into play. "

"Scientists believe gender dysphoria may be caused by the exposure of foetuses to additional hormones as a result of medication taken by the mother, as well as a foetal insensitivity to certain hormones while in the womb."

Doubt there's a gene, I think the hormone exposure is a credible explanation.

What regulates our hormones? The endocrine system.

There's a whole category of chemicals that are labelled "endocrine disruptors"

Join the dots.

Unless, of course, the aim of the study is to look at the effects of cross sex hormones on the brain. :)

To try to assess for differences in the brains of transgender people, I think only subjects who have had no medical therapy should be considered.

hotrocker
You seem to be confusing gender identity with gender expression.

somedyke

the brain mosaic study has been built on, it is quite possibly using observed patterns to differentiate a male brain from a female brain to 93% accuracy.

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4833246/

This is the study that controlled for sexual orientation www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-17352-8

the following is a copy of where I 'translated the abstract into English' in response to a request from Datun on a previous thread

Both transgenderism and homosexuality are facets of human biology, believed to derive from different sexual differentiation of the brain. The two phenomena are, however, fundamentally unalike, despite an increased prevalence of homosexuality among transgender populations. Transgenderism is associated with strong feelings of incongruence between one’s physical sex and experienced gender, not reported in homosexual persons.

I think this is self-explanatory?

The present study searches to find neural correlates for the respective conditions, using fractional anisotropy (FA) as a measure of white matter connections that has consistently shown sex differences.

Translation: In this study, we looked for differences in the nerve cells of the brain using the measurement of fractional anisotropy – which is a brain imaging technique that measures properties of nerve cells (e.g., their shape and density in a particular region of the brain, among other things) – which has been shown in several studies to detect sex differences between brains.

We compared FA in 40 transgender men (female birth-assigned sex) and 27 transgender women (male birth-assigned sex), with both homosexual (29 male, 30 female) and heterosexual (40 male, 40 female) cisgender controls.

Self-explanatory?

Previously reported sex differences in FA were reproduced in cis-heterosexual groups, but were not found among the cis-homosexual groups.

Translation: the previously reported sex differences in brain cells were observed in heterosexuals but not in homosexuals.

After controlling for sexual orientation, the transgender groups showed sex-typical FA-values. The only exception was the right inferior fronto-occipital tract, connecting parietal and frontal brain areas that mediate own body perception.

Translation: If you control for differences in sexuality, the nerve cells in the brains from transgender people were typical of those for their own birth sex, except in a specific area of the brain, ‘the right inferior fronto-occipital tract’, which is known to be associated with how people perceive their own body.

Our findings suggest that the neuroanatomical signature of transgenderism is related to brain areas processing the perception of self and body ownership, whereas homosexuality seems to be associated with less cerebral sexual differentiation.

Translation: the authors of the study conclude that transgenderism (I would say gender dysphoria, because all transgender participants were diagnosed with gender dysphoria) is associated with differences in a brain area associated with perception of your own body, whereas homosexuality is associated with less distinct differences in the nerve cell properties measured between men and women, compared with heterosexuals.

bold bits are quotes from the abstract btw

Thank you Flowers!

First paragraph of Crispy's link: In their PNAS article, Joel et al. (1) demonstrate extensive overlap between the distributions of females and males for many brain characteristics, measured across multiple neuroimaging modalities and datasets. They pose two requirements for categorizing brains into distinct male/female classes: (i) gender differences should appear as dimorphic form differences between male and female brains, and (ii) there should be internal consistency in the degree of “maleness–femaleness” of different elements within a single brain. Based on these criteria, the authors convincingly establish that there is little evidence for this strict sexually dimorphic view of human brains, counter to the popular lay conception of a “male” and “female” brain. This finding has broad implications not only for the ontology of gender, but also for the statistical treatment of sex in morphometric analyses.

It is an interesting article crisp. It shows that you can reliably distinguish between male and female brains (most of the time). Nevertheless the conclusion is "We wholly agree that a strict dichotomy between male/female brains does not exist, but this does not diminish or negate the importance of considering statistical differences between the sexes (e.g., including sex as a covariate in morphometric analyses)."

(referring to the article "Patterns in the human brain mosaic discriminate males from females"), crispbuttyfan wrote - "it is quite possibly using observed patterns to differentiate a male brain from a female brain to 93% accuracy."

The article states that the accuracy reduces to 70% if head-size-related measurements are excluded or regressed out.