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/

Vesuvia: assumecthat foesnt refer to new born brains. Socialisation, plasticity.

Assume that doesn't refer to

Typing

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

www.theguardian.com/science/2013/may/12/how-to-spot-a-murderers-brain
How to spot a murderer's brain

This is about MRI scans to see if they could identify murderers from their brains.

The first paragraph goes 'eeekkk this is a bit controversial like eugenics'. But we are all into progressive eugenics thanks to their promotion by the likes of Toby Young. Its the in thing in 2018.

The point of the article is to make the point that maybe murderers can't help it. They instead have a illness which is a defence for their crimes.

It states that epigenetics - or how our genes react with the world - can be studied and things can be done about social contagions to prevent harm to the brain.

It then goes all Minority Report about the concept of pre-crime and whether we should act to prevent people who look like they have murderers brains from killing anyone.

This would of course revolutionise society as innocent people with the wrong brains could be locked up or people who have committed crimes could walk away scot free because they were merely ill. This is very obviously a progressive thing, which is totally consistent with human rights or justice being seen to be done.

Of course, you could well get cases where both issues cross paths. For example a child sees their mother killed by their father, so their genetics might be cause for concern and having seen such a trauma they become high risk for also committing murder thus they are 'dealt with appropriately' by being locked up.

The whole field of this type of research is a Pandora's Box. It could be used in so many ways against people in order to control them. Depending on who was in power.

Nasty and horrible and not progressive or enlightening in any way.

Yes Red, there was a Horizon programme that was very similar. "Are you good or are you evil?" I think it was called.

No. I remember reading similar studies years ago and finding them quite plausible.

I studied biology at degree level.

As I get older the empirical data actually doesn't support such a conjecture.

RTB

Yes it's a Pandora's box, but the lid is off already. Do you think it should be banned? Would you ban genetic studies of humans altogether? Because they have also been incredibly useful, for example in determining who is likely to benefit from specific types of treatment.

Also, I think if I had gender dysphoria, I might take some comfort from evidence that it was innate. I imagine others might not find it helpful information at all.

More to the point, if we knew what causes gender dysphoria we might be able to work out less radical ways to alleviate it than the current methods. I think it is very worthwhile research.

I genuinely don't know. I find it terrifying.

I find it an area that's particularly upsetting. If being trans is genetic that potentially has implications for me and my son.

One of the things about life I regard as healthy is it's unpredictability. It's somewhat liberating. Almost having your life mapped out or living in fear of a demon in your genes I find rather depressing as a rule. Especially since you could let it dominate your life only to be run over by a combine harvester on the first full moon of the year that falls on the 13th.

Do I think we should do all this research into genetics of disease? I don't know.

I do know we all have to die of something and I think we perhaps as a society have already lost a healthy relationship with death. We don't talk about it as we once did and we don't see it as we once did. Its something we can't avoid ultimately but we are incredibly lacking in honesty about death.

I think perhaps the cynic in me, regards this type of research as something that won't benefit the majority. It will be the preserve of the wealthy and the insurance companies. We are all just fed the dream of the uptopia of preventing things like cancer as we spend a fortune on it. Whilst we do so little research into the next generation of antibiotics.

But ban it? Apart from that being impossible, who am I to say the outcome will be as dystopian as I fear?

flowers thank you for the summary. I have read this study before. It also added that the area of the brain in question keeps changing and developing during your 20s and 30s . It would be interesting to see a follow-up to see if there are changes in the people who took part in the study.

If an mri scan revealed differences in the brains of people who are and are not more likely to become anorexic, or to become alcoholics, what would that tell us?

It would tell us that some people have a predisposition to a body dysphoria or addiction. It does not tell us that the dysphoria is ‘justified’ or that the person should indeed to drinking to excess.

IF they have found a specific reproducible difference that is associated with gender dysphoria this does not show show that their brain is the opposite sex. It’s either a marker of susceptibility to, or a consequence of, gender dysphoria.

gender dysphoria, like all the other dysphorias and probably quite a few psychiatric issues, is probably caused by a spread of a several genes giving you a susceptibility level and then environmental and social factors dictating how it pans out.

It doesn’t not mean ‘I have a lady brain.’

Ben Goldacre wrote about this sort of precognition stuff ages back, crunching the numbers on how many innocent people you'd have to lock up in order to prevent one murder (a lot).

The issue is that tests - any tests - have both false positives and false negatives.

www.badscience.net/2006/12/crystal-balls-and-positive-predictive-values/

Bad Science is such a good book :)

(Oh, and what Bowl said - that's what I was clumsily trying to ay at the start of the thread but she's said it much better.)

Skimmed the thread, so apols if someone has already asked.

• Are these differences seen in babies?

• Is it known how frequently these differences occur in people not claiming to be trans?

hipster the study i quoted was on adults, so you can't infer from it that the differences are innate. Interestingly, the study that the thread is about looked at children and adolescents. The best evidence I've seen that gender dysphoria is innate is the twin study data i mentioned above.

RTB Your points are why genetic counselling is crucial before people decide whether or not they want testing. There is no doubt that genetic knowledge can be beneficial in some cases, for example if you are predisposed to a certain type of cancer you can be screened to try and ensure tumours are caught at an early stage where they are curable.

Bowl Agree with all of that.

Bowl: this is what is so hard to get across to people. All it shows is a tendency to dysphoria, or alternatively that there's no unique male or female brain type. How on earth does it get people agreeing safely that men are women. Just ludicrous.

IF they have found a specific reproducible difference that is associated with gender dysphoria this does not show show that their brain is the opposite sex. It’s either a marker of susceptibility to, or a consequence of, gender dysphoria.

Exactly.

As soon as I saw the trans brain article in the news I had a look into whether we have a female brain.

The largest study showed men have bigger denser brains and women have a thicker cortex. As stated by someone above when the overall size of the person is simular, you can't reliably predict the gender from the brain. The study also said the only known differences in male and female 'thivkinh/behaviour due to brain differences is males are inherently more aggressive, I read somewhere else men have a stronger sense of sexual identity.

I then read this

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.the-scientist.com/%3farticles.amp/articleNo/51914/title/Are-the-Brains-of-Transgender-People-Different-from-Those-of-Cisgender-People-/

(can't get click link sorry)

I may have interpreted it wrong but I took it to say the difference was not difference in the structure of the brain for trans people, its some other variation that make them more like their perceived gender. A difference that according to the other study is not present in all 'female' and 'male' brains.

I also says that this would not be a reliable diagnosis method.

My final question is - do these differences make transmen more aggressive and transwomen less aggressive?

Transwomen have the same crime propensity as all males. Transmen have an increased crime propensity. The change in transmen could be due to the impulsiveness caused by increased testosterone.

Men's aggressiveness is largely due to socialised entitlement not testosterone. T gives impulsiveness and sex drive. Add socialised entitlement and the result is toxic, a heavily aggressive masculinity.

There is no scientific evidence to support a pink or a blue brain hypothesis. Please read Cordelia Fine’s Delusions of Gender.

Therefore the assertion of a brain in the wrong body makes no more sense than a liver or kidney in the wrong body.

You can't determine a person's sex from their brain any more than you can from their height. So you can't tell if the sex of their brain matches their body with any certainty at all. Maybe they have found a structural abnormality?

My understand of the studies I read is that most men have larger brains. Nature has given women a thicker cortext (which increases intelligence) to compensate for lack of size. So we are essentially the same. But smaller men and larger women have brains more similar.

These differences are not what the trans study is looking at. The studies I've read don't actually make it clear what the variations are that trans people have that match their identified gender - but it's not the structural difference.

But as people have said trans men are no less violet and sexually driven then 'cis' men. So they arn't actually different to 'cis' men?

"There is no scientific evidence to support a pink or a blue brain hypothesis. Please read Cordelia Fine’s Delusions of Gender."

It's amazing how many people keep telling others to read this book even though her conclusions are far from proven

fms The book was/is highly influential. I haven't read it, but I probably should. As I understand it, it includes a thorough critique of how brain sex difference studies have been conducted and interpreted.

That said, it was published in 2010, so hopefully at least some researchers in the field may have taken her criticisms into account and adjusted their approach accordingly.

I know from the other thread you are a Peterson fan. Did you read the '12 rules' book? One of the rules is something like, "Assume the person you are talking to knows something you don't".

The largest study ever undertaken on brain structure shows that there's really no such thing as a male and a female brain. Other studies cited as evidence in relation to a neuro basis for transgender identity also reference this, and only show that there appears to be some structural differences that are not at all necessarily hard-wired differences, often overlapping with same sex attraction, and the only trans specific difference I have seen referenced is just as others have mentioned here, and that is in relation to the part of our brain related to self image, and again aren't necessarily hardwired. And there is no evidence whatsoever that differences in brain structure reflect femininity and masculinity - i.e. gender.

I think that what scientists may find some conclusivity on at some point is that there are people who are more likely to suffer/are more susceptible to sexed body dysphoria, and that is probably linked to other conditions, but what we all know is they aren't gonna find a pink and blue brain.

Anyway here's an excerpt from a 2015 article on the findings of the largest brain study carried out to date:

"Brain scans taken from 1400 people aged between 13 and 85. The team looked for variations in the size of brain regions as well as the connections between them. In total, the group identified 29 brain regions that generally seem to be different sizes in self-identified males and females. These include the hippocampus, which is involved in memory, and the inferior frontal gyrus, which is thought to play a role in risk aversion.

When the group looked at each individual brain scan, however, they found that very few people had all of the brain features they might be expected to have, based on their sex. Across the sample, between 0 and 8 per cent of people had “all-male” or “all-female” brains, depending on the definition. “Most people are in the middle”...this means that, averaged across many people, sex differences in brain structure do exist, but an individual brain is likely to be just that: individual, with a mix of features. “There are not two types of brain".