Scientific Report [a voxel-based morphometry study]

Related TSSN Article: [POLL] Transgender people are born that way, a new study has found
Excerpted from the downloadable file:

Grey and white matter volumes either in treatment-naïve or hormone-treated transgender women: a voxel-based morphometry study.

Many previous magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies have documented sex differences in brain morphology, but the patterns of sexual brain differences in transgender women – male sex assigned at birth – with a diagnosis of gender dysphoria (TW) have been rarely investigated to date. We acquired T1-weighted MRI data for the following four (n=80) groups: treatment-naïve TW (TNTW), TW treated with cross-sex hormones for at least one year (TTW), cisgender men, and cisgender women (cisgender individuals as controls). Differences in whole-brain and regional white matter volume and grey matter volume (GMV) were assessed using voxel-based morphometry. We found lower global brain volumes and regional GMVs in a large portion of the posterior-superior frontal cortex in the cisgender women group than in the TTW and cisgender men groups. Additionally, both transgender groups exhibited lower bilateral insular GMVs than the cisgender women group. Our results highlight differences in the insula in both transgender groups; such differences may be characteristic of TW. Furthermore, these alterations in the insula could be related to the neural network of body perception and reflect the distress that accompanies gender dysphoria.

Transgender people (frequently referred to as trans people) experience incongruence between their personal sense of gender identity and their sex assigned at birth . According to the DSM-5 classifcation, trans people who sufer signifcant distress associated with their gender perception are diagnosed with gender dysphoria, which is characterized by distress accompanying the incongruence between one’s sex assigned at birth and the gender with which one identifes. Although not all individuals express discomfort as a result of this discordance, many may experience personal anguish if hormone and/or surgical intervention is not available . Considering that the aetiology of gender dysphoria is unknown, it has been postulated that foetal sexual brain diferentiation during the second half of pregnancy does not correspond to the development of the rest of the body in transgender people. This assumption implies that neuroanatomical features refective of the causative processes that determine gender dysphoria may be detectable in the brain....



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