In recent years, US society has seen a sea change in the perception of transgender people, with celebrities such as Caitlyn Jenner and Laverne Cox becoming the recognizable faces of a marginalized population…
Yet a biological understanding of the contrast between the natal sex and the gender identity of transgender people remains elusive. In recent years, techniques such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) have begun to yield clues to possible biological underpinnings of the condition known as gender dysphoria.
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One prominent hypothesis on the basis of gender dysphoria is that sexual differentiation of the genitals occurs separately from sexual differentiation of the brain in utero, making it possible that the body can veer in one direction and the mind in another.
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Other studies have pinpointed characteristics of the transgender brain that fall in between what is typical for either sex—results that proponents of the developmental mismatch hypothesis generally see as support for their idea.
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For now, as is the case for many aspects of human experience, the neural mechanisms underlying gender remain largely mysterious. While researchers have documented some differences between cis- and transgender people’s brains, a definitive neural signature of gender has yet to be found—and perhaps it never will be.
Read full, original post: Are the Brains of Transgender People Different from Those of Cisgender People?
