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[–]The_Mad_Pirate 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

That's completely untrue. What MRI scans says is that, compared to "cis" men and "cis" women controls, "trans women" have zones that are masculinized ( i.e. it matches the male control group ), other that are feminized ( i.e. it matches the female control group ), and other zones that are demasculinized ( i.e. higher than the female control group but lower than the male control group ). But certainly they do not have female brains ( i.e. their brains do not match the female control group ). Now, HRT does change the brain to push the demasculinized zones closer to the female control group ( estrogen raises the amount of white matter and reduces the amount of gray matter, increases the size and number of connection in the hyppotalamus and reduces size and connections in the amygdala, etc ) but some specific male traits are not altered by HRT ( like spatial rotations which stays in the male range ).

[–]Socialjustus[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Meditation lights up very specific parts of the Brian too. Is meditation a gender?

[–]The_Mad_Pirate 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

That would be a false equivalence. We are not talking about specific brain reactions ( although males and female brains do react different to certain specific stimuli ), but structural differences, specially in the way male and female brains are "wired" ( Sex differences in the structural connectome of the human brain . Ingalhalikar et. al https://es.booksc.org/book/22930858/3be837 ).

Taken together, these results reveal fundamental sex differences in the structural architecture of the human brain. Male brains during development are structured to facilitate withinlobe and within-hemisphere connectivity, with networks that are transitive, modular, and discrete, whereas female brains have greater interhemispheric connectivity and greater cross-hemispheric participation. Within-hemispheric cortical processing along the posterior-anterior dimension involves the linking of perception to action, and motor action is mediated ipsilaterally by the cerebellum. Greater within-hemispheric supratentorial connectivity combined with greater cross-hemispheric cerebellar connectivity would confer an efficient system for coordinated action in males. Greater interhemispheric connectivity in females would facilitate integration of the analytical and sequential reasoning modes of the left hemisphere with the spatial, intuitive processing of information of the right hemisphere.

Mind you that it has been show that HRT on trans do not affect how the brain is wired ( a male MtF does not loses his spatial rotation abilities after transitioning ) even when it does affects things like volume of white matter vs grey matter.

[–]ralph 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

That Ingalhalikar paper doesn't read like the slam-dunk you make it out to be and it has a response with IMO some valid criticisms. The authors responded to that letter in a weirdly petulant, defensive, and uprofessional way without actually addressing the points brought up in the response letter.