shut up,
@Dee Price. you're full of shit.
It is believed that during the intrauterine period the fetal brain develops in the male direction through a direct action of testosterone on the developing nerve cells, or in the female direction through the absence of this hormone surge. According to this concept, our gender identity (the...
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Sexual differentiation of the human brain in relation to gender identity and sexual orientation
Ivanka Savic 1,
Alicia Garcia-Falgueras,
Dick F Swaab
Affiliations expand
Abstract
It is believed that during the intrauterine period the fetal brain develops in the male direction through a direct action of testosterone on the developing nerve cells, or in the female direction through the absence of this hormone surge. According to this concept, our gender identity (the conviction of belonging to the male or female gender) and sexual orientation should be programmed into our brain structures when we are still in the womb. However, since sexual differentiation of the genitals takes place in the first two months of pregnancy and sexual differentiation of the brain starts in the second half of pregnancy, these two processes can be influenced independently, which may result in transsexuality. This also means that in the event of ambiguous sex at birth, the degree of masculinization of the genitals may not reflect the degree of masculinization of the brain. There is no proof that social environment after birth has an effect on gender identity or sexual orientation. Data on genetic and hormone independent influence on gender identity are presently divergent and do not provide convincing information about the underlying etiology. To what extent fetal programming may determine sexual orientation is also a matter of discussion. A number of studies show patterns of sex atypical cerebral dimorphism in homosexual subjects. Although the crucial question, namely how such complex functions as sexual orientation and identity are processed in the brain remains unanswered, emerging data point at a key role of specific neuronal circuits involving the hypothalamus.
Most people have a mix of male and female features in their brain, suggesting a person's cognitive skills can't be predicted by gender alone
www.newscientist.com
Scans prove there's no such thing as a 'male' or 'female' brain
HUMANS 30 November 2015
By
Jessica Hamzelou
Petr Strnad/Millennium Images, UK
You may have read that having a male brain will
earn you more money. Or maybe that female brains are
better at multitasking. But there is no such thing as a female or male brain, according to the first search for sex differences across the entire human brain. It reveals that most people have a mix of male and female brain features. And it also supports the idea that gender is non-binary, and that gender classifications in many situations are meaningless.
“This evidence that human brains cannot be categorised into two distinct classes is new, convincing, and somehow radical,” says
Anelis Kaiser at the University of Bern, Switzerland.
The idea that people have either a “female” or “male” brain is an old one, says
Daphna Joel at Tel Aviv University in Israel. “The theory goes that once a fetus develops testicles, they secrete
testosterone which masculinises the brain,” she says. “If that were true, there would be two types of brain.”
To test the theory, Joel and her colleagues looked for differences in brain scans taken from 1400 people aged between 13 and 85. The team looked for variations in the size of brain regions as well as the connections between them. In total, the group identified 29 brain regions that generally seem to be different sizes in self-identified males and females. These include the
hippocampus, which is involved in memory, and the
inferior frontal gyrus, which is thought to play a role in risk aversion.
“There are not two types of brain”
When the group looked at each individual brain scan, however, they found that very few people had all of the brain features they might be expected to have, based on their sex. Across the sample, between 0 and 8 per cent of people had “all-male” or “all-female” brains, depending on the definition. “Most people are in the middle,” says Joel.
This means that, averaged across many people, sex differences in brain structure do exist, but an individual brain is likely to be just that: individual, with a mix of features. “There are not two types of brain,” says Joel.
Read more:
https://www.newscientist.com/articl...hing-as-a-male-or-female-brain/#ixzz735bxt1IV
