Year: 2012
Type: article
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: Background: The degree to which one identifies as male or female has a profound impact on one’s life. Yet, there is a limited understanding of what contributes to this important characteristic termed gender identity. In order to reveal factors influencing gender identity, studies have focused on people who report strong feelings of being the opposite sex, such as male-to-female (MTF) transsexuals. Method: To investigate potential neuroanatomical variations associated with transsexualism, we compared the regional thickness of the cerebral cortex between 24 MTF transsexuals who had not yet been treated with cross-sex hormones and 24 age-matched control males. Results: Results revealed thicker cortices in MTF transsexuals, both within regions of the left hemisphere (i.e., frontal and orbito-frontal cortex, central sulcus, perisylvian regions, paracentral gyrus) and right hemisphere (i.e., pre-/post-central gyrus, parietal cortex, temporal cortex, precuneus, fusiform, lingual, and orbito-frontal gyrus). Conclusion: These findings provide further evidence that brain anatomy is associated with gender identity, where measures in MTF transsexuals appear to be shifted away from gender-congruent men.
Language: English
Subfield: Social Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
Funders: Ahmanson Foundation, Brain Mapping Support Foundation, Pierson-Lovelace Foundation, Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung, National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Mental Health, National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Cancer Institute, National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, National Center for Research Resources, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development
Awards: Computational Anatomy and Multidimensional Modeling, Diskriminanzanalyse hirnstruktureller MR-Daten, A Probabilistic Reference System for the Human Brain, General Clinical Research Center, Center for Computational Biology (CCB)(RMI), Neuroendocrinology, Sex Differences, and Reproduction, EXTRAMURAL RESEARCH FACILITIES CONSTRUCTION
OpenAlex ID: W2153873923