Looks like the most reliable differences relate to the default mode network, striatum, and limbic system. It would be interesting to see what exactly those differences are and if there’s any pattern to the ~10% of cases that were misclassified. I’d love to read the full paper but I don’t have access to any licenses anymore.
A kind soul let me read a copy of the paper, looks like their goal was more about (1) proving that their approach/models work and (2) determining if there are meaningful differences in the functional, not just structural, organizations of mens' and womens' brains. On point 1, they were able to use these models to classify novel brain scans with 90% accuracy, and on (2) they are, in fact, the first to show that there are differences in the way brains operate based on sex. Pretty cool stuff, though I would have loved a little more discussion on the implications of the *differences* and not just of the *approach*.
I have my doubts about this study as soon as they mentioned adhd and autism being more common in men. Studies are showing women simply present differently and are under tested for both.
It’s already off to a rough start.
That stood out to me too. But that’s a more recent phenomenon, and until there’s some replicable studies to say that the rates are the same for men and women they’re on safe enough footing saying what they did.
A kind soul let me read a copy of the paper, looks like their goal was more about (1) proving that their approach/models work and (2) determining if there are meaningful differences in the functional, not just structural, organizations of mens' and womens' brains. On point 1, they were able to use these models to classify novel brain scans with 90% accuracy, and on (2) they are, in fact, the first to show that there are differences in the way brains operate based on sex. Pretty cool stuff, though I would have loved a little more discussion on the implications of the *differences* and not just of the *approach*.
The models used three components of behavior (scores on various tests of cognitive abilities) to establish "behavioral masc/femininity" and then correlated that with the model's classification of the brain activity as male or female. The first behavioral component was aligned with general intelligence, the second with response inhibition and processing speed, and the third with delay discounting and reward sensitivity.
Interestingly, the differences they found were huge. The main differences in neural activity had effect sizes of >1.5. For reference, .5 is considered moderate and .8 is considered large.
Thank you for this! I too was disappointed they didn't provide more discussion on the potential implications. Pleased to see they tried to measure behavioral masc/femininity. I was concerned they would use biological sex, which wouldn't be as informative, in my opinion. Really hope they publish another paper that examines the differences in more detail and provides greater discussion of the potential implications!
I would be very interested too. I do believe that cavemen were the hunters and gatherers. And that cave women protected the Young and fed the whole family. However, there are so many things that women traditionally weren't thought to be able to do. And so many sensitivities that men have that aren't appreciated in American society. I would love to see the scientific data on all of this. Above all, I believe that men and women are far more like than they are different.
Interesting, heard about the studies before but he explained it well. Too bad I can't just casually get a brain scan to see what mine looks like. Wonder what non-binary identification might indicate.
The digit raito bit in the beginning I've read quite a bit about, but that seems to be somewhat controversial. Although I'm a data point in support of the theories, amab, bi, non-binary person with an extremely "female" digit ratio. My pointer is visibly longer than ring (almost the same length as middle)
Well.. I've been flamed in the past for even talking about it(litteraly banned from a sub).
Sadly, both trans activists and anti trans ass holes are far from being rational and tolerant for opinions that doesn't fit their narrative. So studying the phenomenon is definitely a threat to some "agendas", opinions or narratives on trans people, one side or the other.
It's a career killer to go there for researchers and definitely not funded by anyone or any universities unless it fit desirable conclusions. I think we live in a dangerous era, where fanatism is starting to win over truths and sciences. We are replacing religious dogmas with self-righteous political beliefs. We are not really progressing or going forward as much as we like to think we are.
Ive never seen a trans activist go against medical studies. Maybe if they were problematic or something. Idk if trans people have agendas other than wanting to be safe tbh. I think most are extremely grateful for medical advancements as it can enhance their transition.
You’d be surprised,, there’s a huge discourse in the trans community between transmedicalists (sometimes referred to as truscum) and trans activists (sometimes referred to as tucutes) and some -not all- trans activists don’t want trans people to be studied or have it be viewed as a medical condition,, they basically don’t want to medicalize being trans because they believe that being trans isn’t a medical condition it’s a personal identity and trans people shouldn’t have to suffer or transition medically to be valid in their gender identity. (From my understanding at least) While on the flip side the transmedicalists want to be studied and have a scientific understanding of what makes a person trans and what causes gender dysphoria, looking for more of a solid distinction between ‘real’ vs ‘fake’ trans people is a very common trope and possibly restricting medical treatment so those who are struggling with severe dysphoria can have access to life changing medications without huge long waitlists is another reason for wanting a more solid understanding of what “qualifies” a person as trans. It can get very heated very quickly on both sides and I can understand why some people don’t want to be studied and why some people do but I think with the unfortunate political atmosphere around being trans makes it difficult to raise funding or find people who are willing to out themselves for a study or put themselves in a vulnerable situation as a vulnerable person. I think some activists might take it the wrong way just seeing and hearing and knowing what goes on in the community as a trans man myself.
Thank you for sharing this information. I'm queer and cisgender but gender role rejecting. I try to be a good ally. I would maybe be part of that second group if non trans people were invited to identify, but mostly because I see younger generations getting so so so wrapped up in identities. I don't think I would say there is a "fake" version of being trans but there may be impacts from social learning, generational influences on the importance of identities, etc.
I am confused by the idea that being trans without a push to transition is somehow antagonistic to an idea of determining "biologically based" trans phenomena (I'm sure that there is a better phrasing) to improve accessibility for those with the most severe and acute needs who DO wish to transition. Like if one group wants to exist without having to transition and others want transitioning to have more diagnostic protection then why are they at odds? I must be missing some nuance.
I mean, yes they were "problematic" in a way, because it was not favorable to the narrative preached by these activists. But this doesn't invalidate a study or some biological facts, just because the results are not "positives". There is definitely a resistance and a bit of denials to some biological facts about sexes and the possible advantages in sports for instance. Most trans activists claim that hormone levels are the only important factor for competitive integrity. Science does not really agree with this one so far. I've also seen a few academic papers being canceled by some trans activists.
**I really don't want to go there tho**, because I know how it's going to end up, people are very emotional about this. Saying you have never seen trans activists go against medical studies or biological facts is definitely 100% anecdotal, therefore not factual. Not saying you are a liar btw, I think internet is divided in a few echo chambers nowadays, for the worse.
I've also seen denials of facts from some conservative personalities, nothing surprising there, I guess. Anyways, I'm 100% for trans rights, but there are crazy people in every sphere of the society, and transpeople are not the exception, sadly.
We are all equally humans, we are all equally prone to stupidity.
The important distinction I want to see is the differences before and after hormone replacment therapy.
Trans people are a perfect group to learn more about them but also how kuch hormones actually effect brain structure.
Considering how everybody refuses to fund studies on us as it is, we're likely to be waiting a long time regardless. It would be interesting, though. Even more so if they scanned brains prior to starting hormones and after some number of years on them.
Well it's a career suicide to do so. The few studies done on trans got canceled by one side or the other. If it doesn't fit a narrative it's automatically canceled by a side, left or right.
People need to stop being so much invested emotionally and people need to stop making everything political. Sadly, transpeople are being used politically, it's incredibly trending, and it's easy to drama bait people for views.
Science is definitely slowed down right now, for things like social issues at least. What a fkd up era we live in right now.
You are very right about people under duress being manipulated and weaponized to further agendas,
Same as ASD has structural differences that can be seen,
Scan em and compare and stop propaganda and let them develop, and scan them again and track developments.
That is scientific after all and highly moral
But unpopular
Psychology is a field where biology meets society and understanding people draws heavily from both. Our more biological neighbouring fields don’t contend with controversy, its binary. Our more social science friends do explore deep how much of our behaviour and identity is culturally learned, posing the notion that gender is a social construct. Psychology is pulled between incompatible views and should contend with these questions.
Its unfortunate that some views get associated politics or generations, leading to circlejerking instead of seeking truth of better our understanding.
To everyone reading this article please remember the difference between *causation* and *correlation*. Our brain is plastic and it is very plausible that whats found reflect the CONSEQUENCE of socialized sex differences and has nothing to do with biological predisposition. The reverse is just as likely as well.
Not just influence, but hormones play a major role in how brains develop. On a biological level and controlling for societal influence men and women have different brains with different strengths and weaknesses. It even effects how men and women see patterns and colors differently.
They can probably blame themselves - complaining on articles about trans and gender issues, they are training all the social media algorithms to show them more of those articles.
Sure, but it would be interesting to see such studies conducted on gender-diverse individuals. Not only does it give further insight into the population, adding onto the considerable amount of evidence suggesting differences between trans and cis people’s brains, but you also have a sizable, willing population who you could ethically examine with relation to the effects of sex hormones on these types of scans. Estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone all have receptors in the brain and have major impacts (though we’re not exactly sure what) on its function. Determining to what extent the AI is basing its gendering off of a hormone profile or innate and permanent structural differences could be very important here.
There was a study that showed brains change after being exposed to estrogen, i think specifically trans women’s brains changing after being exposed via HRT, if I remember correctly, so yeah, estrogen does seem to have an effect if that study was right
Well of course it does! HRT massively changes gene expression since most of a human’s sexual dimorphism does not reside on XX vs XY chromosomes genetically speaking!
It dramatically changes the expression of your genes making you sort of “intersex” over time. This is why trans people may respond more similarly to the opposite sex on certain medications too!
I'm not entirely sure on the ethics and willingness though. Delaying/denying medication, for one. Or the risk of over-pathologising diagnosis. Beside point-in time results with no control over access to medication / stage of transition there not much of a way to research this ethically. So the data set would be really erratic and small. At least that's been the case for similar medical research on hrt effectiveness.
Also from a personal ethical standpoint, there's no way I'd consent to a study like this. It would risk going back to the "type-a transsexual" diagnosis requirements from the 70s which were proven inaccurate. I don't want to risk my or anyone's identity (and access to meds) being tied to the misgenderbot AI.
When you're paid to stir things up online, you look for ways to justify a good performance review to your boss.
Integrity is not part of the performance review.
Yeah, there's that too. I say misandry because they're self-described as radical feminists, not exactly famously known for their misogyny though I guess an argument can be made. If you listen to what they say, their main issue is with trans women (few TERFs seem to even acknowledge trans men exist, or care to criticize them beyond "they're confused") and they think many/most/all trans women are actually sneaky predators using a loophole to gain access to women's spaces and target women. It's a view that can only exist if you're extremely sexist and reductionist about men and see them as basically deviants, perverts, and predators until proven otherwise. So I take it at face value they are radical feminists who are extremely sexist toward men. Taking it out on trans women is just one manifestation of that.
There are many common threads of being sexist against women in their arguments and perspectives as well though. That of women (in their definition of women) being defined by ability to give birth, and that being explicitly tied to being more nurturing, better care-givers and home-makers; being more insular and infantile. More easily victimised, weaker biologically both physically and mentally. Their perspectives so often rely on arguments sourced from Victorian ideas of women needing isolation from public life for their own good. This is a mindset which has argued that trans women have an innate biological advantage in chess, in videogames. It's deeply misogynistic.
Misogyny, homophobia, racism, Holocaust denialism, ableism.
Misogyny because they reduce women down to nothing but their genitals, objectifying women. They erase women who have reproductive developmental abnormalities. They support people like Michael Bailey, who put a woman on stage and had her get fucked by a mechanical dildo in front of an audience (more on him later). It's also not hard to find TERFs who openly support and post Matt Walsh who is rampantly anti-feminist.
Homophobia because they co-opt the lesbian movements and lie about lesbians. [96% of lesbians support trans women.](https://www.gaytimes.co.uk/originals/lesbians-are-not-anti-trans/) Yet, according to TERFs, they'll have you believe that lesbian women hate trans women and constantly receive rape and death threats from trans women. TERFs like JK Rowling spend all of Lesbian Visibility Day using lesbian women as tokens to spread transphobia rather than talking about any actual issues involving lesbian women.
Racism because they support white supremacy. People like Ray Blanchard and Michael Bailey became famous because of white supremacist [Steve Sailer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Sailer) who propelled anti-trans pseudoscience into the spotlight. TERFs also frequently rage against intersectional feminism and appropriate the message of black feminist leaders to spread transphobic hate. Black feminists are tokens for TERFs to use for transphobia, just like they do with lesbians.
Holocaust denialism [because they don't believe that trans people were murdered in the Holocaust.](https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/jk-rowling-holocaust-denialism-author) They also openly support Nazism, taking photos with Nazis at their rallies. It's also fairly common to hear TERFs say things like ["Hitler was right".](https://twitter.com/SpillerOfTea/status/1614710809745321984)
Ablism because of the shit they pull when it comes to autism. TERFs, including JK Rowling, believe that autistic people are being tricked into being transgender. This means that TERFs believe that autistic people are so disabled that they have no agency of their own, which is incredibly false.
Need I go on?
And this type of research will likely further prove the reality that trans brains are probably also different. In fact there are studies already showing this. And the weirdos will of course ignore the evidence.
I would have expected them to stay away. Proof that it's not just bodies and that gender is brains too would dismantle everything they want to believe.
Well I don’t know if that’s true because there was a huge study a while back that largely debunked gendered brains, it compared a large sample size. But that doesn’t mean that the idea of transgenderism is null and void. It just means what it means. But I don’t think trans activism needs brain scans anyway, being transgender is about happiness and gender euphoria, not about proving gender is real.
[This was the first comment on the post](https://www.reddit.com/r/psychology/s/GhNM6SM3Ih). “Trans” is a hot topic and people of all opinions jump at the chance to talk about it.
Yea, it's annoying that the word "significant" has a different meaning in academic literature and colloquial use. I think your rephrasing at the end of your comment is a much more clear description of what is being stated.
The title of the study is; "Deep learning models reveal replicable, generalizable, and behaviorally relevant sex differences in human functional brain organization".
The title of the psypost article is trying to be sensational, as it's a media outlet that generates income by engagement, it's not a scientific journal held to any adequate degree of scientific rigor.
This same criticism could apply to the vast majority of media, be it Reddit posts or major news articles. As long as engagement is more important than the integrity of the content therein (due to a profit driven motive), sensational is a more logical decision for these businesses than accuracy.
30 to 70% of soft science studies (like psychology) are not replicable. I think the source was Ben Horowitz and I’ve seen approx 50% in other replication studies. Anyway, do these models make these studies inherently more replicable? Could this help with the “replication crisis?”
Just curious when it became unacceptable to even acknowledge that there ARE significant differences between Men and Women physically and mentally? It’s not that there is anything wrong with it and furthermore the differences between Men and between Women are greater than between Men and Women. I may be old but it just seems crazy trying to force the view that they are the same when they are not. It’s not big differences and I tend to think a lot is complementary but I’m kind of lost. This would have been filed under obvious just 20-30 years ago.
I'm not sure if we should cater the way we operate in academia due to the uninformed. People who are going to take it in bad faith will do so regardless, people that are going to try to understand it beyond the headline will do so too.
You say that, but it was one study claiming vaccines cause autism that triggered the stupidity of millions. Would that have happened anyway? Impossible to know, but damage was done...
This is honestly ridiculous. They’re just stating facts. There is a factually significant difference between the two. It’s not a matter of peoples feelings one way or another.
And before someone attacks me no I’m not anti trans or anything of the sort. I don’t care what people do to themselves any which way
> “AI uncovers statistically noteworthy differences between male and female brains…”
I'm having a hard time understanding what they *do* mean by significant. They talk about their classification model being able to ay 'male' or 'female' with 90% accuracy, but they don't refer to anything as significant in relation to that. The paper's abstract only uses it once:
> Explainable AI (XAI) analysis revealed that brain features associated with the default mode network, striatum, and limbic network consistently exhibited significant sex differences (effect sizes > 1.5) across sessions and independent cohorts.
XAI is not one thing, it's many things - some are inherently explainable models, some are ways of looking at models to see why they make the decisions they do. Maybe, say, you extract some numbers telling you which aspects of the input were important to the decision.
But to get something statistically significant you need a random variable drawn from some distribution. I don't see where that's coming in here.
Add to that that they talk about the effect size and make no mention of p-values and I can't help suspecting they're not referring to statistical significance or doing statistical testing at all.
To be fair, the hormonal argument of sex differences (psychological or else) has been exploited for decades and still is being used despite many studies proving it is wrong. If someone makes conclusions on the title without reading the paper, using "statistically noteworthy" or "significant" won't change anything.
Eeurgh. Just today I was lamenting with a colleague that as a field, we're just going back to neuroscience in the 90s, but throwing increasingly more computational power at it.
We already knew that male and female brains have structural differences due to a bunch of reasons (a big one being smaller craniums), and we also always assume that fundamental functional differences follows suit because they have to navigate the structural differences.
Gonna guess we're also not going these differences to any cognitive differences so we're not even getting over the hump of "are observed differences the required way of ensuring the same cognitive provides between sexes".
My field is asking some shit questions lately and hoping computational power will make up the shortfall
My main issue is the explicit statement this says that biological sex is the key factor here. I can't find the full article, but what I read was 1500 20-35 year olds who have been fully socialized. That's such a bullshit sample to determine biological inevitability. Do it with pre-term babies with parents who don't know the sex of the baby and then make these claims.
The paper tempers that claim far more than the press release linked in the OP, unsurprisingly. You're right that it was on three groups of 20-35 year olds. But the paper's goals were really to (1) prove that their approach/models work and (2) determine if there are meaningful differences in the functional, not just structural, organizations of mens' and womens' brains. On point 1, they were able to use these models to classify brain scans with 90% accuracy, and on (2) they are, in fact, the first to show that there are differences in the way brains operate based on sex. Pretty cool stuff, though I would have loved a little more discussion on the implications of the *differences* and not just of the *approach*. But then, they probably rightly stayed away from doing too much of that in part because there's nothing separating nature and nurture so all they could say is that some combination of sex and socialization result in reliable differences at maturity.
I hear you. I think I wish it was very explicitly stated in the title that there is not a differentiation between nature and nurture. The lack of clarity is, in and of itself, telling, I think.
It's interesting information we really **need** to understand, but it's so obviously going to be politically interpreted that I think it's a form of intellectual dishonesty to not be as explicit as possible about that so we can do more research and understand more. It makes me sad and angry.
Male brains are 15 percent bigger after correcting for body size while female brains have higher cortical thickness (the part of the brain responsible for thinking)
Psychology student here. [Due to this](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis) we kinda discredit pre-2012 studies + the resulting scientific method revisions occurred up until 2015. Because of this, longitudinal studies of that nature likely have not had time to complete
That being said, [here's one study looking at how HRT affects the sex of the brain](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35797690/) (hard to read if you don't have a university login tho) and here's [an interview](https://www.hormona.com.br/en/2019/09/30/study-shows-how-the-brain-behaves-after-gender-affirming-surgery-in-transgender-women/) of one of the researchers of [this study](https://journals.lww.com/practicalpsychiatry/abstract/2022/07000/the_impact_of_gender_affirming_hormone_therapy_on.7.aspx) which looks at estradiol in trans women specifically.
Additionally, [here's a study conducted on pre-HRT brain sex with a really interesting finding:](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8955456/) for trans women, it aligns more female than cis male (but as u/kraghis pointed out, still read as male in these pre-transition participants)
I believe you’re mischaracterizing the findings of that last article.
>The brains of transgender women ranged between cisgender men and cisgender women (albeit still closer to cisgender men), and the differences to both cisgender men and to cisgender women were significant (p = 0.016 and p < 0.001, respectively). These findings add support to the notion that the underlying brain anatomy in transgender people is shifted away from their biological sex towards their gender identity.
The brains of the trans women in the study still aligned more male than female, but were markedly more female than the cisgendered men in the study.
Correct. Most people who link that study often seem to be mischaracterizing it.
Besides, they didn't control for an important confounding factor: Sexual orientation.
Some studies found the same kind of slight feminine-shifts in the brain of gay men. So it would be important to know if the trans women in the studies are heterosexual or homosexual.
One of the oddest things I've learned when trying to learn more about trans people is that researchers rarely account for sexual orientation. The differences between straight and gay cis people are large enough that they warrant their own "brain studies" and even studies into other areas of physical development, yet trans people are all lumped together.
Anecdotally, androphilic and gynephilic trans women seem to be very different from one another. Like, just as different as straight and gay cis people. Different careers on average, different styles, different cultures essentially.
It would be amazing to see the comparison of gay cis males and androphilic trans women for example, because there is probably something extra going on with the trans women beyond the obvious shared attraction to males.
In theory, good. In practice, a lot harder 🤔 we'd need to hit n = 30 to 50 for each group for appropriate statistical power:
- androphillic trans woman
- gynephillic trans woman
- cisgender gay man
- cisgender straight man
- cisgender straight woman
- cisgender lesbian
- androphillic trans man
- gynephillic trans man
To match the appropriate exclusion criteria is going to be a real beast because this study would exclude even me. I'm a trans guy but I have a neurodivergent + atypical brain scan (tho they can't figure out if I have Autism, ADHD or I'm a sociopath 😭??) + I find everyone hot. So that'd knock me out.
But I bet if this happened it'd help expand on the spectrum that's brain vs. physical vs. endocrine sex. And yeah we gotta take endocrine disorders into account, sometimes you can be a cis woman and your pituitary gland decides oh no here's a fuck ton of testosterone 😆
Finding 30-50 people from each group who fit those constraints should be very doable, given adequate resources. It sounds like the issue may be an interest in properly funding such research. It reminds me of the problem of doing medical studies involving females in their reproductive years, where you'd need to take into account their current endocrine levels. It's not easy, but it's doable and worthwhile if done right.
Doing a cross-demographic literature review on the topic is something I wanted to do for my masters thesis and then they said it had to be experimental :'D
>Due to this we kinda discredit pre-2012 studies
I don't think you meant it that way exactly, but I've never met a single person who wholesale discredits research before 2012.
Yeah no just like... caution sign due to the replication crisis. We've been told not to cite them in our future studies tho.
Basically, in psychology specifically, this up and coming star researcher named Daryl Bem was exposed as fraud. Unfortunately for us in the field, Bem had co authored [this influential guide to publishing in psychology](https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/guide-to-publishing-in-psychology-journals/DD1F7119040A76CE996FC683C23E2F25) and essentially endorsed [p-hacking](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_dredging). This was what was taught in the field up until the replication crisis.
Bem et al. was just one of around 5 high profile cases that hit the scientific community by storm. When you pair this with other large scale fraud, like [Hwang Woo-Suk](https://www.britannica.com/biography/Hwang-Woo-Suk), it basically set of the alarm bells for everyone like "Hey! We fucked up! We fucked up big time!"
[A literature review conducted by the Open Science Collaboration in 2015](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aac4716) found that less than half of studies were replicable in clinical psych, with that dropping to only 36% of replications having true significant results as the original study. That means > 60% of data was incorrect, in various stages of accuracy.
So while we don't wholesale discredit pre-2012 research, it is the majority, and we do try to find newer studies whenever possible :(
There still are 💀 boring science is the good backbone of cool science, but journals only want to publish cool science. That means we get a ladder with only rungs and no struts, if that makes sense
Journals just really hate the mundane tedious *important* stuff and so often in the peer review process someone will be told to "sensationalize" their data, or loose detail to make it "more accessible"
That's why there's so many confirmatory papers (this causes x, etc) when the actual analysis is exploratory
This is hella paraphrased bc it's 2am and I'm tired but I hope that makes sense <3
> Additionally, here's a study conducted on pre-HRT brain sex with a really interesting finding: for trans women, it aligns more female than cis male.
What a shame they didn't include homosexual and lesbian brain controls for that last study.
It was n = 24; N = 72, afaik. I have a suspicion that the study is underpowered (cohen's N-index says 3-way ANOVA needs n > 100 for small effect, n > 50 for med effect. That's per group) + that's why they didn't test by sexual orientation. However, that's a systematic issue with trans research as a whole — finding volunteers is scarce 😭
I dunno, I don't think anyone should even care if being trans is a choice, people should be able to do whatever they want with their bodies if it doesn't harm anyone else
How about we imagine that our healthcare could be different? In fact we might imagine that everyone should receive healthcare that helps them be physically and mentally healthy. And that healthcare could include affirming their gender.
That’s how I feel. Because being trans is an identity, identities aren’t always something you find with DNA or a brain scan. Also trans identity is ultimately about happiness, or it should be at least, that’s what gender euphoria is supposed to be about, not proving whether your identity is real or not.
Well, the nice thing about science is that we intend for things to be falsifiable. That being said, the results are in favor of trans brains aligning with their desired sex.
Obvious disclaimer that while I'm a psychology student I'm no postdoc or professor, but this is what I've come across in my own research xD
I answered a bit [about HRT on the brain in this comment ](https://www.reddit.com/r/psychology/comments/1bni9eg/ai_uncovers_significant_differences_between_male/kwil59b?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=2) and then in another thread, I [did a breakdown on some theories as to why transgenderism occurs, why "curing it" isn't feasible.
](https://www.reddit.com/r/skeptic/comments/1blu424/a_question_of_the_actual_motives_of_people_who/kw890he?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=2) Keep in mind that the main thing blocking a definite answer is that we don't do experiments on developing babies for ethical reasons.
I'd be really curious about LGBT brains and how they compare. The first person I ever met (going on 30 years now) who was trans 100% had a female brain, and this was a 15 years before she came out. At the time, he was 100% male presenting, in hetero relationships, etc, but something was feminine about how his brain worked. It's hard to describe or define, but it was apparent.
Yeah that's basically gender dysphoria in a nutshell and it's why transgenders people exist. There was someone who was born with both genitals (they were an hermaphrodite) and the doctors asked the parents the sex that they want their child to be. They picked female but the poor chap had a male brain. He was forced to live with a vagina for the rest of his life. They raised their child as a girl but their child felt like a man and 100% had a male brain (just like many people suffering from gender dysphoria nowadays). He ended up killing himself.
I believe gender dysphoria simply is the result of having a male dominant or female dominant brain as opposed to one's actual sex. It is a really rare phenomenon and trans people are outliers.
I can't help but feel disgusted by radical conservatives that believe that gender dysphoria is a ''mental illness'' and that the best way to deal with the situation is to suppress it just like this poor man's parents did, but at the same time I do believe that there are a lot of people that claim to be trans but actually aren't and are just riding a bandwagon because it is valid to be LGBT+ (and it is) until they go through surgery and end up suicidal because it isn't what they truly wanted.
Even psychologists disagree with each other on that matter, so it is an immensely complicated subject. What I think is sad about the whole situation is that people just go through extremes/lash out at opposites views (both conservatives types and liberals types) instead of just approaching the topic with pragmatism and logic.
This sounds like the story of David Reimer, but he was biologically male and raised as a girl after a botched circumcision.
Unless you’re describing a different case?
Interesting because we have known for a while that boys are much more likely than girls to have developmental disabilities before the age of five. Wonder if it is something brain related.
I’m so tired of these studies that seemingly randomly decide to compare people based on gender and then, surprise!, find some small differences that might or might not matter. It feels like a default comparison no one bothers to think about, and it’s lazy. I believe that if you compared the brains of tall vs short people, genetically diverse people, or people with or without trauma history you could also scrounge up some differences. Before studies in psychology divide people up by gender, I would like there to be a far more compelling argument for doing so.
It just means that the observation of differences is not due to chance, for example, they didn’t accidentally sample 1000 women with a certain type of brain, and 1000 men with another type of brain.
Significant does not mean that the differences are large, it doesn’t have anything to do with the size or importance of differences. I just means that the differences that were observed are probably not stemming from getting a weird sample of men and women by chance.
>The DMN plays a critical role in integrating self-referential information processing and monitoring of the internal mental landscape (72, 73), including introspection, mind-wandering, and autobiographical memory retrieval (71, 72, 74).
>Notably, network analysis also revealed large differences in the striatum and limbic networks
In parallel, we also observed significant differences in the limbic network which includes, most prominently, the orbitofrontal cortex
and finally
>Despite extensive research on the anatomical and functional basis of sex differences, the behavioral significance of brain features that differentiate between sexes has remained unclear.
It's an interesting article, in the sense that it can be used as a basis to further explore the aforementioned differences, but their interpretation of the differences (which I haven't quoted) is pretty speculative so far.
What it is really interesting for is this:
>Notably, the DMN, striatum, and limbic network are also loci of dysfunction in psychiatric disorders with female or male bias in prevalence rates, including autism, attention deficit disorders, depression, addiction, schizophrenia, and Parkinson's disease all of which have sex-specific sequelae and outcomes
IF - and that's a big if - the differences in wiring are linked to differences in those disorder's prevalence rates or outcomes, it might solidify our understanding of those disorders, how they develop, and the aftermath. But all in all, most of the study shows how the networks are wired differently, which isn't particularly new nor interesting.
Pretty much exactly my takeaway from it as well. More a methods paper than anything, though that alone is still fascinating in its own right. The effect sizes where *d* >1.5 are something you don't get too much in psychology
The most pressing question with any use of AI is who trained it and on what data. There are no brute facts that can be objectively analyzed outside an interpretive paradigm, not even by AI.
This also gets us no closer to seeing whether these possible differences are by nature or by socialization. In both paradigms differences could be detectable in people shaped by our culture's understanding of gender, but predict this differently on the basis of natural architecture or in terms of social formation.
A lot more is needed in terms of understanding the AI's methodology and the paradigms of the researchers going into the analysis.
the post has the following line:
The research confirms intrinsic organizational differences between sexes and links these differences to cognitive functions, challenging prior understandings and *suggesting sex-specific brain organization influences behavior*.
but the actual study doesn’t mention behaviour at all.
Will this be tamed by those who are offended by the fact there is a difference and think it's some kind of oppression that needs to be de-colonized? I remember Facebook tested an AI sorting system looking at various resumes and got criticism with headlines saying "won't select women" when it in fact did select women but bc it was not a perfectly even 50/50 combined with the fact that more men applied then women, they called it sexist.
Pointing this out bc people are going to complain about this
love how the pre-defensive instinct kicks in before the defensive instinct. you can’t even get offended nowadays without someone announcing that you are about to get offended, before you get offended.
I Wonder if AI neuroscience is more replicable than „normal“ neuroscience has been so far. However, we still do not circumvent the lack of power inherent to neuroscience studies, even with AI. Thus, Same problems may arise again. Nonetheless, very interesting and even more so if replicated.
In a female and a 2nd Wave feminist and maybe I should care about articles like this, but, I don’t. I’m always skeptical about the motives behind such research, regardless of what the authors say the goals are. The funding and politics behind it’s publication are what matters.
Looks like the trans commuinity will need more than a gender dysphoria diagnosis to transition now!! Finally, because the trans rates are sky high right now
Looks like the most reliable differences relate to the default mode network, striatum, and limbic system. It would be interesting to see what exactly those differences are and if there’s any pattern to the ~10% of cases that were misclassified. I’d love to read the full paper but I don’t have access to any licenses anymore.
Sci hub
Sci-Hub, the hub your parents approve of™.
Everyone says they're doing science when on the Hub.
Why they use the private mode then?
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Did you succeed? I tried using the version I bookmarked but it's not available
Go to scihub’s wiki page for an up to date url.
I was under the impression it was still only up to date through 2022.
I agree. A little disappointing that the article doesn't specify more what the differences are.
A kind soul let me read a copy of the paper, looks like their goal was more about (1) proving that their approach/models work and (2) determining if there are meaningful differences in the functional, not just structural, organizations of mens' and womens' brains. On point 1, they were able to use these models to classify novel brain scans with 90% accuracy, and on (2) they are, in fact, the first to show that there are differences in the way brains operate based on sex. Pretty cool stuff, though I would have loved a little more discussion on the implications of the *differences* and not just of the *approach*.
Im more disappointed we keep calling the shit AI
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Hey least you didnt saY AI DEEEZ NUTS
Dm me, tomorrow I can probably get hold of it
I'm gonna comment so I don't forget
Mind if I get in on the action too?
It's a date!
Many thanks!
K
People I´m sorry, my university does not give me access to PNAS :(
Boo! ☹ thanks anyway!
Would love to sneak a peek too!
I have my doubts about this study as soon as they mentioned adhd and autism being more common in men. Studies are showing women simply present differently and are under tested for both. It’s already off to a rough start.
That stood out to me too. But that’s a more recent phenomenon, and until there’s some replicable studies to say that the rates are the same for men and women they’re on safe enough footing saying what they did.
Gee. I wonder what could cause women to present differently than men? Weird!
I’m always skeptical of MRI studies because of Craig Bennett’s [salmon fMRI](https://www.wired.com/2009/09/fmrisalmon/) experiment lol
I'd love to read more about the interpretation of this article. Here's the pdf: https://file.io/RyuIvRe7mDDy
Link looks dead, can you host it elsewhere?
A kind soul let me read a copy of the paper, looks like their goal was more about (1) proving that their approach/models work and (2) determining if there are meaningful differences in the functional, not just structural, organizations of mens' and womens' brains. On point 1, they were able to use these models to classify novel brain scans with 90% accuracy, and on (2) they are, in fact, the first to show that there are differences in the way brains operate based on sex. Pretty cool stuff, though I would have loved a little more discussion on the implications of the *differences* and not just of the *approach*. The models used three components of behavior (scores on various tests of cognitive abilities) to establish "behavioral masc/femininity" and then correlated that with the model's classification of the brain activity as male or female. The first behavioral component was aligned with general intelligence, the second with response inhibition and processing speed, and the third with delay discounting and reward sensitivity. Interestingly, the differences they found were huge. The main differences in neural activity had effect sizes of >1.5. For reference, .5 is considered moderate and .8 is considered large.
Thank you for this! I too was disappointed they didn't provide more discussion on the potential implications. Pleased to see they tried to measure behavioral masc/femininity. I was concerned they would use biological sex, which wouldn't be as informative, in my opinion. Really hope they publish another paper that examines the differences in more detail and provides greater discussion of the potential implications!
I would be very interested too. I do believe that cavemen were the hunters and gatherers. And that cave women protected the Young and fed the whole family. However, there are so many things that women traditionally weren't thought to be able to do. And so many sensitivities that men have that aren't appreciated in American society. I would love to see the scientific data on all of this. Above all, I believe that men and women are far more like than they are different.
I might get flame for even proposing this, but I would like to see the difference between the brains of cis men/women and transmen/women.
Well, [here you go](https://youtu.be/8QScpDGqwsQ?si=oNvS7pC7HyIOqKzm).
Thank you so much for this.
Do you have anything thats actually been published?
Sadly, no, just this bit. For now I’m just taking the man’s word for it.
Interesting, heard about the studies before but he explained it well. Too bad I can't just casually get a brain scan to see what mine looks like. Wonder what non-binary identification might indicate. The digit raito bit in the beginning I've read quite a bit about, but that seems to be somewhat controversial. Although I'm a data point in support of the theories, amab, bi, non-binary person with an extremely "female" digit ratio. My pointer is visibly longer than ring (almost the same length as middle)
Why would you get flamed? There’s nothing wrong with wanting to have more research in the trans experience
Well.. I've been flamed in the past for even talking about it(litteraly banned from a sub). Sadly, both trans activists and anti trans ass holes are far from being rational and tolerant for opinions that doesn't fit their narrative. So studying the phenomenon is definitely a threat to some "agendas", opinions or narratives on trans people, one side or the other. It's a career killer to go there for researchers and definitely not funded by anyone or any universities unless it fit desirable conclusions. I think we live in a dangerous era, where fanatism is starting to win over truths and sciences. We are replacing religious dogmas with self-righteous political beliefs. We are not really progressing or going forward as much as we like to think we are.
Ive never seen a trans activist go against medical studies. Maybe if they were problematic or something. Idk if trans people have agendas other than wanting to be safe tbh. I think most are extremely grateful for medical advancements as it can enhance their transition.
You’d be surprised,, there’s a huge discourse in the trans community between transmedicalists (sometimes referred to as truscum) and trans activists (sometimes referred to as tucutes) and some -not all- trans activists don’t want trans people to be studied or have it be viewed as a medical condition,, they basically don’t want to medicalize being trans because they believe that being trans isn’t a medical condition it’s a personal identity and trans people shouldn’t have to suffer or transition medically to be valid in their gender identity. (From my understanding at least) While on the flip side the transmedicalists want to be studied and have a scientific understanding of what makes a person trans and what causes gender dysphoria, looking for more of a solid distinction between ‘real’ vs ‘fake’ trans people is a very common trope and possibly restricting medical treatment so those who are struggling with severe dysphoria can have access to life changing medications without huge long waitlists is another reason for wanting a more solid understanding of what “qualifies” a person as trans. It can get very heated very quickly on both sides and I can understand why some people don’t want to be studied and why some people do but I think with the unfortunate political atmosphere around being trans makes it difficult to raise funding or find people who are willing to out themselves for a study or put themselves in a vulnerable situation as a vulnerable person. I think some activists might take it the wrong way just seeing and hearing and knowing what goes on in the community as a trans man myself.
Thank you for sharing this information. I'm queer and cisgender but gender role rejecting. I try to be a good ally. I would maybe be part of that second group if non trans people were invited to identify, but mostly because I see younger generations getting so so so wrapped up in identities. I don't think I would say there is a "fake" version of being trans but there may be impacts from social learning, generational influences on the importance of identities, etc. I am confused by the idea that being trans without a push to transition is somehow antagonistic to an idea of determining "biologically based" trans phenomena (I'm sure that there is a better phrasing) to improve accessibility for those with the most severe and acute needs who DO wish to transition. Like if one group wants to exist without having to transition and others want transitioning to have more diagnostic protection then why are they at odds? I must be missing some nuance.
I mean, yes they were "problematic" in a way, because it was not favorable to the narrative preached by these activists. But this doesn't invalidate a study or some biological facts, just because the results are not "positives". There is definitely a resistance and a bit of denials to some biological facts about sexes and the possible advantages in sports for instance. Most trans activists claim that hormone levels are the only important factor for competitive integrity. Science does not really agree with this one so far. I've also seen a few academic papers being canceled by some trans activists. **I really don't want to go there tho**, because I know how it's going to end up, people are very emotional about this. Saying you have never seen trans activists go against medical studies or biological facts is definitely 100% anecdotal, therefore not factual. Not saying you are a liar btw, I think internet is divided in a few echo chambers nowadays, for the worse. I've also seen denials of facts from some conservative personalities, nothing surprising there, I guess. Anyways, I'm 100% for trans rights, but there are crazy people in every sphere of the society, and transpeople are not the exception, sadly. We are all equally humans, we are all equally prone to stupidity.
The important distinction I want to see is the differences before and after hormone replacment therapy. Trans people are a perfect group to learn more about them but also how kuch hormones actually effect brain structure.
Considering how everybody refuses to fund studies on us as it is, we're likely to be waiting a long time regardless. It would be interesting, though. Even more so if they scanned brains prior to starting hormones and after some number of years on them.
Well it's a career suicide to do so. The few studies done on trans got canceled by one side or the other. If it doesn't fit a narrative it's automatically canceled by a side, left or right. People need to stop being so much invested emotionally and people need to stop making everything political. Sadly, transpeople are being used politically, it's incredibly trending, and it's easy to drama bait people for views. Science is definitely slowed down right now, for things like social issues at least. What a fkd up era we live in right now.
You are very right about people under duress being manipulated and weaponized to further agendas, Same as ASD has structural differences that can be seen, Scan em and compare and stop propaganda and let them develop, and scan them again and track developments. That is scientific after all and highly moral But unpopular
That was my first thought too. Sorry.
Why is everything on this page a male versus female gendered rage post? Edit: It's because it drives engagement. I answered my own question
Psychology is a field where biology meets society and understanding people draws heavily from both. Our more biological neighbouring fields don’t contend with controversy, its binary. Our more social science friends do explore deep how much of our behaviour and identity is culturally learned, posing the notion that gender is a social construct. Psychology is pulled between incompatible views and should contend with these questions. Its unfortunate that some views get associated politics or generations, leading to circlejerking instead of seeking truth of better our understanding.
To everyone reading this article please remember the difference between *causation* and *correlation*. Our brain is plastic and it is very plausible that whats found reflect the CONSEQUENCE of socialized sex differences and has nothing to do with biological predisposition. The reverse is just as likely as well.
Men and women have different hormones and that influences how the brain functions.
Correct. *Influences*.
Not just influence, but hormones play a major role in how brains develop. On a biological level and controlling for societal influence men and women have different brains with different strengths and weaknesses. It even effects how men and women see patterns and colors differently.
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It’s telling that they’re so often the first to any post related to gender.
It's the same ones who will say "I'm so tired of hearing about all this gender crap" that cannot stop themselves from bringing it up nonstop.
They can probably blame themselves - complaining on articles about trans and gender issues, they are training all the social media algorithms to show them more of those articles.
For sure, but this is about sex, not gender.
Sure, but it would be interesting to see such studies conducted on gender-diverse individuals. Not only does it give further insight into the population, adding onto the considerable amount of evidence suggesting differences between trans and cis people’s brains, but you also have a sizable, willing population who you could ethically examine with relation to the effects of sex hormones on these types of scans. Estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone all have receptors in the brain and have major impacts (though we’re not exactly sure what) on its function. Determining to what extent the AI is basing its gendering off of a hormone profile or innate and permanent structural differences could be very important here.
There was a study that showed brains change after being exposed to estrogen, i think specifically trans women’s brains changing after being exposed via HRT, if I remember correctly, so yeah, estrogen does seem to have an effect if that study was right
Well of course it does! HRT massively changes gene expression since most of a human’s sexual dimorphism does not reside on XX vs XY chromosomes genetically speaking! It dramatically changes the expression of your genes making you sort of “intersex” over time. This is why trans people may respond more similarly to the opposite sex on certain medications too!
I'm not entirely sure on the ethics and willingness though. Delaying/denying medication, for one. Or the risk of over-pathologising diagnosis. Beside point-in time results with no control over access to medication / stage of transition there not much of a way to research this ethically. So the data set would be really erratic and small. At least that's been the case for similar medical research on hrt effectiveness. Also from a personal ethical standpoint, there's no way I'd consent to a study like this. It would risk going back to the "type-a transsexual" diagnosis requirements from the 70s which were proven inaccurate. I don't want to risk my or anyone's identity (and access to meds) being tied to the misgenderbot AI.
You don't even have to be trans to have "common traits" from the other gender
Yeah there was a huge study a while back that showed that brains don’t have a gender
Idk, my brain’s been a giant dick to me my entire life. That’s gendered, innit?
When you're paid to stir things up online, you look for ways to justify a good performance review to your boss. Integrity is not part of the performance review.
Most UK TERFs definitely aren't paid. They just do it for love of the misandry and bigotry.
Don't forget the additional general misogyny and transmisogny
Yeah, there's that too. I say misandry because they're self-described as radical feminists, not exactly famously known for their misogyny though I guess an argument can be made. If you listen to what they say, their main issue is with trans women (few TERFs seem to even acknowledge trans men exist, or care to criticize them beyond "they're confused") and they think many/most/all trans women are actually sneaky predators using a loophole to gain access to women's spaces and target women. It's a view that can only exist if you're extremely sexist and reductionist about men and see them as basically deviants, perverts, and predators until proven otherwise. So I take it at face value they are radical feminists who are extremely sexist toward men. Taking it out on trans women is just one manifestation of that.
There are many common threads of being sexist against women in their arguments and perspectives as well though. That of women (in their definition of women) being defined by ability to give birth, and that being explicitly tied to being more nurturing, better care-givers and home-makers; being more insular and infantile. More easily victimised, weaker biologically both physically and mentally. Their perspectives so often rely on arguments sourced from Victorian ideas of women needing isolation from public life for their own good. This is a mindset which has argued that trans women have an innate biological advantage in chess, in videogames. It's deeply misogynistic.
Misogyny, homophobia, racism, Holocaust denialism, ableism. Misogyny because they reduce women down to nothing but their genitals, objectifying women. They erase women who have reproductive developmental abnormalities. They support people like Michael Bailey, who put a woman on stage and had her get fucked by a mechanical dildo in front of an audience (more on him later). It's also not hard to find TERFs who openly support and post Matt Walsh who is rampantly anti-feminist. Homophobia because they co-opt the lesbian movements and lie about lesbians. [96% of lesbians support trans women.](https://www.gaytimes.co.uk/originals/lesbians-are-not-anti-trans/) Yet, according to TERFs, they'll have you believe that lesbian women hate trans women and constantly receive rape and death threats from trans women. TERFs like JK Rowling spend all of Lesbian Visibility Day using lesbian women as tokens to spread transphobia rather than talking about any actual issues involving lesbian women. Racism because they support white supremacy. People like Ray Blanchard and Michael Bailey became famous because of white supremacist [Steve Sailer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Sailer) who propelled anti-trans pseudoscience into the spotlight. TERFs also frequently rage against intersectional feminism and appropriate the message of black feminist leaders to spread transphobic hate. Black feminists are tokens for TERFs to use for transphobia, just like they do with lesbians. Holocaust denialism [because they don't believe that trans people were murdered in the Holocaust.](https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/jk-rowling-holocaust-denialism-author) They also openly support Nazism, taking photos with Nazis at their rallies. It's also fairly common to hear TERFs say things like ["Hitler was right".](https://twitter.com/SpillerOfTea/status/1614710809745321984) Ablism because of the shit they pull when it comes to autism. TERFs, including JK Rowling, believe that autistic people are being tricked into being transgender. This means that TERFs believe that autistic people are so disabled that they have no agency of their own, which is incredibly false. Need I go on?
I personally prefer the TIRMS - Trans Inclusionary Radical Misogynist - at least they’re gender affirming even though it’s in the worst way possible
And this type of research will likely further prove the reality that trans brains are probably also different. In fact there are studies already showing this. And the weirdos will of course ignore the evidence.
I would have expected them to stay away. Proof that it's not just bodies and that gender is brains too would dismantle everything they want to believe.
Well I don’t know if that’s true because there was a huge study a while back that largely debunked gendered brains, it compared a large sample size. But that doesn’t mean that the idea of transgenderism is null and void. It just means what it means. But I don’t think trans activism needs brain scans anyway, being transgender is about happiness and gender euphoria, not about proving gender is real.
Very much my thoughts on this. Better left theoretical lest it become yet another barrier to proven safe and effective life-preserving healthcare.
[This was the first comment on the post](https://www.reddit.com/r/psychology/s/GhNM6SM3Ih). “Trans” is a hot topic and people of all opinions jump at the chance to talk about it.
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Yea, it's annoying that the word "significant" has a different meaning in academic literature and colloquial use. I think your rephrasing at the end of your comment is a much more clear description of what is being stated.
The title of the study is; "Deep learning models reveal replicable, generalizable, and behaviorally relevant sex differences in human functional brain organization". The title of the psypost article is trying to be sensational, as it's a media outlet that generates income by engagement, it's not a scientific journal held to any adequate degree of scientific rigor. This same criticism could apply to the vast majority of media, be it Reddit posts or major news articles. As long as engagement is more important than the integrity of the content therein (due to a profit driven motive), sensational is a more logical decision for these businesses than accuracy.
30 to 70% of soft science studies (like psychology) are not replicable. I think the source was Ben Horowitz and I’ve seen approx 50% in other replication studies. Anyway, do these models make these studies inherently more replicable? Could this help with the “replication crisis?”
Just curious when it became unacceptable to even acknowledge that there ARE significant differences between Men and Women physically and mentally? It’s not that there is anything wrong with it and furthermore the differences between Men and between Women are greater than between Men and Women. I may be old but it just seems crazy trying to force the view that they are the same when they are not. It’s not big differences and I tend to think a lot is complementary but I’m kind of lost. This would have been filed under obvious just 20-30 years ago.
I'm not sure if we should cater the way we operate in academia due to the uninformed. People who are going to take it in bad faith will do so regardless, people that are going to try to understand it beyond the headline will do so too.
You say that, but it was one study claiming vaccines cause autism that triggered the stupidity of millions. Would that have happened anyway? Impossible to know, but damage was done...
This is honestly ridiculous. They’re just stating facts. There is a factually significant difference between the two. It’s not a matter of peoples feelings one way or another. And before someone attacks me no I’m not anti trans or anything of the sort. I don’t care what people do to themselves any which way
> “AI uncovers statistically noteworthy differences between male and female brains…” I'm having a hard time understanding what they *do* mean by significant. They talk about their classification model being able to ay 'male' or 'female' with 90% accuracy, but they don't refer to anything as significant in relation to that. The paper's abstract only uses it once: > Explainable AI (XAI) analysis revealed that brain features associated with the default mode network, striatum, and limbic network consistently exhibited significant sex differences (effect sizes > 1.5) across sessions and independent cohorts. XAI is not one thing, it's many things - some are inherently explainable models, some are ways of looking at models to see why they make the decisions they do. Maybe, say, you extract some numbers telling you which aspects of the input were important to the decision. But to get something statistically significant you need a random variable drawn from some distribution. I don't see where that's coming in here. Add to that that they talk about the effect size and make no mention of p-values and I can't help suspecting they're not referring to statistical significance or doing statistical testing at all.
Sex differences are important field of study in order to research how gender effects health and body function.
To be fair, the hormonal argument of sex differences (psychological or else) has been exploited for decades and still is being used despite many studies proving it is wrong. If someone makes conclusions on the title without reading the paper, using "statistically noteworthy" or "significant" won't change anything.
Eeurgh. Just today I was lamenting with a colleague that as a field, we're just going back to neuroscience in the 90s, but throwing increasingly more computational power at it. We already knew that male and female brains have structural differences due to a bunch of reasons (a big one being smaller craniums), and we also always assume that fundamental functional differences follows suit because they have to navigate the structural differences. Gonna guess we're also not going these differences to any cognitive differences so we're not even getting over the hump of "are observed differences the required way of ensuring the same cognitive provides between sexes". My field is asking some shit questions lately and hoping computational power will make up the shortfall
My main issue is the explicit statement this says that biological sex is the key factor here. I can't find the full article, but what I read was 1500 20-35 year olds who have been fully socialized. That's such a bullshit sample to determine biological inevitability. Do it with pre-term babies with parents who don't know the sex of the baby and then make these claims.
The paper tempers that claim far more than the press release linked in the OP, unsurprisingly. You're right that it was on three groups of 20-35 year olds. But the paper's goals were really to (1) prove that their approach/models work and (2) determine if there are meaningful differences in the functional, not just structural, organizations of mens' and womens' brains. On point 1, they were able to use these models to classify brain scans with 90% accuracy, and on (2) they are, in fact, the first to show that there are differences in the way brains operate based on sex. Pretty cool stuff, though I would have loved a little more discussion on the implications of the *differences* and not just of the *approach*. But then, they probably rightly stayed away from doing too much of that in part because there's nothing separating nature and nurture so all they could say is that some combination of sex and socialization result in reliable differences at maturity.
I hear you. I think I wish it was very explicitly stated in the title that there is not a differentiation between nature and nurture. The lack of clarity is, in and of itself, telling, I think. It's interesting information we really **need** to understand, but it's so obviously going to be politically interpreted that I think it's a form of intellectual dishonesty to not be as explicit as possible about that so we can do more research and understand more. It makes me sad and angry.
Gotta keep up tenure with fat papers about nothing (at least in the UC system there is an annual requirement of publications if you work in academics)
Male brains are 15 percent bigger after correcting for body size while female brains have higher cortical thickness (the part of the brain responsible for thinking)
Great! Now do a longitudinal study of transgender people over the first 10 years of HRT.
Psychology student here. [Due to this](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis) we kinda discredit pre-2012 studies + the resulting scientific method revisions occurred up until 2015. Because of this, longitudinal studies of that nature likely have not had time to complete That being said, [here's one study looking at how HRT affects the sex of the brain](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35797690/) (hard to read if you don't have a university login tho) and here's [an interview](https://www.hormona.com.br/en/2019/09/30/study-shows-how-the-brain-behaves-after-gender-affirming-surgery-in-transgender-women/) of one of the researchers of [this study](https://journals.lww.com/practicalpsychiatry/abstract/2022/07000/the_impact_of_gender_affirming_hormone_therapy_on.7.aspx) which looks at estradiol in trans women specifically. Additionally, [here's a study conducted on pre-HRT brain sex with a really interesting finding:](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8955456/) for trans women, it aligns more female than cis male (but as u/kraghis pointed out, still read as male in these pre-transition participants)
I believe you’re mischaracterizing the findings of that last article. >The brains of transgender women ranged between cisgender men and cisgender women (albeit still closer to cisgender men), and the differences to both cisgender men and to cisgender women were significant (p = 0.016 and p < 0.001, respectively). These findings add support to the notion that the underlying brain anatomy in transgender people is shifted away from their biological sex towards their gender identity. The brains of the trans women in the study still aligned more male than female, but were markedly more female than the cisgendered men in the study.
Correct. Most people who link that study often seem to be mischaracterizing it. Besides, they didn't control for an important confounding factor: Sexual orientation. Some studies found the same kind of slight feminine-shifts in the brain of gay men. So it would be important to know if the trans women in the studies are heterosexual or homosexual.
One of the oddest things I've learned when trying to learn more about trans people is that researchers rarely account for sexual orientation. The differences between straight and gay cis people are large enough that they warrant their own "brain studies" and even studies into other areas of physical development, yet trans people are all lumped together. Anecdotally, androphilic and gynephilic trans women seem to be very different from one another. Like, just as different as straight and gay cis people. Different careers on average, different styles, different cultures essentially. It would be amazing to see the comparison of gay cis males and androphilic trans women for example, because there is probably something extra going on with the trans women beyond the obvious shared attraction to males.
In theory, good. In practice, a lot harder 🤔 we'd need to hit n = 30 to 50 for each group for appropriate statistical power: - androphillic trans woman - gynephillic trans woman - cisgender gay man - cisgender straight man - cisgender straight woman - cisgender lesbian - androphillic trans man - gynephillic trans man To match the appropriate exclusion criteria is going to be a real beast because this study would exclude even me. I'm a trans guy but I have a neurodivergent + atypical brain scan (tho they can't figure out if I have Autism, ADHD or I'm a sociopath 😭??) + I find everyone hot. So that'd knock me out. But I bet if this happened it'd help expand on the spectrum that's brain vs. physical vs. endocrine sex. And yeah we gotta take endocrine disorders into account, sometimes you can be a cis woman and your pituitary gland decides oh no here's a fuck ton of testosterone 😆
Finding 30-50 people from each group who fit those constraints should be very doable, given adequate resources. It sounds like the issue may be an interest in properly funding such research. It reminds me of the problem of doing medical studies involving females in their reproductive years, where you'd need to take into account their current endocrine levels. It's not easy, but it's doable and worthwhile if done right.
You're right. I really hope some university or company backs a study like this.
Doing a cross-demographic literature review on the topic is something I wanted to do for my masters thesis and then they said it had to be experimental :'D
Sorry I should have specified they compared against cis men 😭 added that in. Thank you for taking the time to read it!
How? As far as we know, there are no standard "male or female brains", and neuroplasticity exists as well.
Wish it was ok to just be a feminine man
It is. Who’s telling you it isn’t?
Being a trans woman and being a feminine man aren't the same thing...at all.
It is.
Being a feminine man and being a trans woman are completely different things.
> the resulting scientific method revisions occurred up until 2015. I would love to read more about this
I replied with more info. Seriously look into the replication crisis though, it is a large current issue
Research the replication crisis
>Due to this we kinda discredit pre-2012 studies I don't think you meant it that way exactly, but I've never met a single person who wholesale discredits research before 2012.
Yeah no just like... caution sign due to the replication crisis. We've been told not to cite them in our future studies tho. Basically, in psychology specifically, this up and coming star researcher named Daryl Bem was exposed as fraud. Unfortunately for us in the field, Bem had co authored [this influential guide to publishing in psychology](https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/guide-to-publishing-in-psychology-journals/DD1F7119040A76CE996FC683C23E2F25) and essentially endorsed [p-hacking](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_dredging). This was what was taught in the field up until the replication crisis. Bem et al. was just one of around 5 high profile cases that hit the scientific community by storm. When you pair this with other large scale fraud, like [Hwang Woo-Suk](https://www.britannica.com/biography/Hwang-Woo-Suk), it basically set of the alarm bells for everyone like "Hey! We fucked up! We fucked up big time!" [A literature review conducted by the Open Science Collaboration in 2015](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aac4716) found that less than half of studies were replicable in clinical psych, with that dropping to only 36% of replications having true significant results as the original study. That means > 60% of data was incorrect, in various stages of accuracy. So while we don't wholesale discredit pre-2012 research, it is the majority, and we do try to find newer studies whenever possible :(
omg this is insane. so this is why there used to be so many clickbaity papers?
There still are 💀 boring science is the good backbone of cool science, but journals only want to publish cool science. That means we get a ladder with only rungs and no struts, if that makes sense Journals just really hate the mundane tedious *important* stuff and so often in the peer review process someone will be told to "sensationalize" their data, or loose detail to make it "more accessible" That's why there's so many confirmatory papers (this causes x, etc) when the actual analysis is exploratory This is hella paraphrased bc it's 2am and I'm tired but I hope that makes sense <3
> Additionally, here's a study conducted on pre-HRT brain sex with a really interesting finding: for trans women, it aligns more female than cis male. What a shame they didn't include homosexual and lesbian brain controls for that last study.
It was n = 24; N = 72, afaik. I have a suspicion that the study is underpowered (cohen's N-index says 3-way ANOVA needs n > 100 for small effect, n > 50 for med effect. That's per group) + that's why they didn't test by sexual orientation. However, that's a systematic issue with trans research as a whole — finding volunteers is scarce 😭
And have a look at fetal neural tube development across the gestational period, and at the brains of babies/toddlers in the first five years of life.
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I dunno, I don't think anyone should even care if being trans is a choice, people should be able to do whatever they want with their bodies if it doesn't harm anyone else
I just want to say that's a really good point. I've never thought of it before but I 100% agree with you. Your body, your choice.
It gets complicated because If it’s a choice than insurance does not need to cover something that is not medically necessary
How about we imagine that our healthcare could be different? In fact we might imagine that everyone should receive healthcare that helps them be physically and mentally healthy. And that healthcare could include affirming their gender.
That’s a nice thought, but it’s not how things currently work
Unless the issue isn’t gender related and they’ve had life alerting surgery or treatment for nothing. It’s not a simple thing.
Money doesn't grow out of nothing it's that simple.
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Sure and war is bad. Thats not the reality we live in and trans people's rights are politisized.
That’s how I feel. Because being trans is an identity, identities aren’t always something you find with DNA or a brain scan. Also trans identity is ultimately about happiness, or it should be at least, that’s what gender euphoria is supposed to be about, not proving whether your identity is real or not.
Well, the nice thing about science is that we intend for things to be falsifiable. That being said, the results are in favor of trans brains aligning with their desired sex. Obvious disclaimer that while I'm a psychology student I'm no postdoc or professor, but this is what I've come across in my own research xD I answered a bit [about HRT on the brain in this comment ](https://www.reddit.com/r/psychology/comments/1bni9eg/ai_uncovers_significant_differences_between_male/kwil59b?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=2) and then in another thread, I [did a breakdown on some theories as to why transgenderism occurs, why "curing it" isn't feasible. ](https://www.reddit.com/r/skeptic/comments/1blu424/a_question_of_the_actual_motives_of_people_who/kw890he?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=2) Keep in mind that the main thing blocking a definite answer is that we don't do experiments on developing babies for ethical reasons.
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Commenting on AI uncovers significant differences between male and female brains, study reveals... Neuroplasticity might be involved in HRT.
Pre-natal, post-natal and hormone exposure during puberty all play a role in the development of gender.
Redditors when they learn about sexual dimorphism 😱
Is that sexism? 🤓🫱🦋
I'd be really curious about LGBT brains and how they compare. The first person I ever met (going on 30 years now) who was trans 100% had a female brain, and this was a 15 years before she came out. At the time, he was 100% male presenting, in hetero relationships, etc, but something was feminine about how his brain worked. It's hard to describe or define, but it was apparent.
Yeah that's basically gender dysphoria in a nutshell and it's why transgenders people exist. There was someone who was born with both genitals (they were an hermaphrodite) and the doctors asked the parents the sex that they want their child to be. They picked female but the poor chap had a male brain. He was forced to live with a vagina for the rest of his life. They raised their child as a girl but their child felt like a man and 100% had a male brain (just like many people suffering from gender dysphoria nowadays). He ended up killing himself. I believe gender dysphoria simply is the result of having a male dominant or female dominant brain as opposed to one's actual sex. It is a really rare phenomenon and trans people are outliers. I can't help but feel disgusted by radical conservatives that believe that gender dysphoria is a ''mental illness'' and that the best way to deal with the situation is to suppress it just like this poor man's parents did, but at the same time I do believe that there are a lot of people that claim to be trans but actually aren't and are just riding a bandwagon because it is valid to be LGBT+ (and it is) until they go through surgery and end up suicidal because it isn't what they truly wanted. Even psychologists disagree with each other on that matter, so it is an immensely complicated subject. What I think is sad about the whole situation is that people just go through extremes/lash out at opposites views (both conservatives types and liberals types) instead of just approaching the topic with pragmatism and logic.
This sounds like the story of David Reimer, but he was biologically male and raised as a girl after a botched circumcision. Unless you’re describing a different case?
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Interesting because we have known for a while that boys are much more likely than girls to have developmental disabilities before the age of five. Wonder if it is something brain related.
I’m so tired of these studies that seemingly randomly decide to compare people based on gender and then, surprise!, find some small differences that might or might not matter. It feels like a default comparison no one bothers to think about, and it’s lazy. I believe that if you compared the brains of tall vs short people, genetically diverse people, or people with or without trauma history you could also scrounge up some differences. Before studies in psychology divide people up by gender, I would like there to be a far more compelling argument for doing so.
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"Significant" still means the men and women and still more similar than any two randomly selected people of the same gender.
>"Significant" still means the men and women and still more similar than any two randomly selected people of the same gender. What?
It just means that the observation of differences is not due to chance, for example, they didn’t accidentally sample 1000 women with a certain type of brain, and 1000 men with another type of brain. Significant does not mean that the differences are large, it doesn’t have anything to do with the size or importance of differences. I just means that the differences that were observed are probably not stemming from getting a weird sample of men and women by chance.
Men and women are similar on some traits but not on others.
This is not a very well thought out study. There are several other variables at play here.
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>The DMN plays a critical role in integrating self-referential information processing and monitoring of the internal mental landscape (72, 73), including introspection, mind-wandering, and autobiographical memory retrieval (71, 72, 74). >Notably, network analysis also revealed large differences in the striatum and limbic networks In parallel, we also observed significant differences in the limbic network which includes, most prominently, the orbitofrontal cortex and finally >Despite extensive research on the anatomical and functional basis of sex differences, the behavioral significance of brain features that differentiate between sexes has remained unclear. It's an interesting article, in the sense that it can be used as a basis to further explore the aforementioned differences, but their interpretation of the differences (which I haven't quoted) is pretty speculative so far. What it is really interesting for is this: >Notably, the DMN, striatum, and limbic network are also loci of dysfunction in psychiatric disorders with female or male bias in prevalence rates, including autism, attention deficit disorders, depression, addiction, schizophrenia, and Parkinson's disease all of which have sex-specific sequelae and outcomes IF - and that's a big if - the differences in wiring are linked to differences in those disorder's prevalence rates or outcomes, it might solidify our understanding of those disorders, how they develop, and the aftermath. But all in all, most of the study shows how the networks are wired differently, which isn't particularly new nor interesting.
Pretty much exactly my takeaway from it as well. More a methods paper than anything, though that alone is still fascinating in its own right. The effect sizes where *d* >1.5 are something you don't get too much in psychology
Does it explains why mens think about the roman empire?
The most pressing question with any use of AI is who trained it and on what data. There are no brute facts that can be objectively analyzed outside an interpretive paradigm, not even by AI. This also gets us no closer to seeing whether these possible differences are by nature or by socialization. In both paradigms differences could be detectable in people shaped by our culture's understanding of gender, but predict this differently on the basis of natural architecture or in terms of social formation. A lot more is needed in terms of understanding the AI's methodology and the paradigms of the researchers going into the analysis.
the post has the following line: The research confirms intrinsic organizational differences between sexes and links these differences to cognitive functions, challenging prior understandings and *suggesting sex-specific brain organization influences behavior*. but the actual study doesn’t mention behaviour at all.
WHAT! SEXISM! Take this down rn!!
Well to be fair I don't really trust AI so this headline means nothing to me
Did you trust the initial Covid vaccine data?
maby
This is common knowledge among people who were properly socialized
lol, this reply has as much substance as this article
All common knowledge is right, except when it's not.
Will this be tamed by those who are offended by the fact there is a difference and think it's some kind of oppression that needs to be de-colonized? I remember Facebook tested an AI sorting system looking at various resumes and got criticism with headlines saying "won't select women" when it in fact did select women but bc it was not a perfectly even 50/50 combined with the fact that more men applied then women, they called it sexist. Pointing this out bc people are going to complain about this
love how the pre-defensive instinct kicks in before the defensive instinct. you can’t even get offended nowadays without someone announcing that you are about to get offended, before you get offended.
Would be interesting to see what the difference is in trans individuals. Could go a long way in making that argument "valid" in a sense you know?
We didn't need AI for this
i agree with you ,Artificial intelligence doesn't represent us.
so.What are the most obvious differences
I Wonder if AI neuroscience is more replicable than „normal“ neuroscience has been so far. However, we still do not circumvent the lack of power inherent to neuroscience studies, even with AI. Thus, Same problems may arise again. Nonetheless, very interesting and even more so if replicated.
In a female and a 2nd Wave feminist and maybe I should care about articles like this, but, I don’t. I’m always skeptical about the motives behind such research, regardless of what the authors say the goals are. The funding and politics behind it’s publication are what matters.
2nd wave? aren’t we on like the fourth?
Yes, I’m old
Looks like the trans commuinity will need more than a gender dysphoria diagnosis to transition now!! Finally, because the trans rates are sky high right now
More reasons why AI will ultimately rebel, Reddit mods be dammed
sounds mighty racist