[Ceist]

Originally Posted by momonkey

Gender benders are a national obsession in the Netherlands and have been for decades.


Wrong Body - The treatment of transsexual teens in the Netherlands


Quackery at its finest!

Fairly new maybe. But why "quackery"?

I guess if you don't know much at all about the field and have a prejudice against transgender people, you may think that way.

Several recent studies showed (untreated) transgender people have brains more like the opposite gender.


"White matter microstructure in female to male transsexuals before cross-sex hormonal treatment. A diffusion tensor imaging study."
Journal of Psychiatric Research, Volume 45, Issue 2, Pages 199-204 2011 Feb;45(2):199-204. Epub 2010 Jun 8.
Giuseppina Rametti, Beatriz Carrillo, Esther Gómez-Gil, Carme Junque, Santiago Segovia, Ángel Gomez, Antonio Guillamon


http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20562024

BACKGROUND:

Some gray and white matter regions of the brain are sexually dimorphic. The best MRI technique for identifying subtle differences in white matter is diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether white matter patterns in female to male (FtM) transsexuals before commencing cross-sex hormone treatment are more similar to that of their biological sex or to that of their gender identity.
METHOD:

DTI was performed in 18 FtM transsexuals and 24 male and 19 female heterosexual controls scanned with a 3 T Trio Tim Magneton. Fractional anisotropy (FA) was performed on white matter fibers of the whole brain, which was spatially analyzed using Tract-Based Spatial Statistics.
RESULTS:

In controls, males have significantly higher FA values than females in the medial and posterior parts of the right superior longitudinal fasciculus (SLF), the forceps minor, and the corticospinal tract. Compared to control females, FtM showed higher FA values in posterior part of the right SLF, the forceps minor and corticospinal tract. Compared to control males, FtM showed only lower FA values in the corticospinal tract.
CONCLUSIONS:

Our results show that the white matter microstructure pattern in untreated FtM transsexuals is closer to the pattern of subjects who share their gender identity (males) than those who share their biological sex (females). Our results provide evidence for an inherent difference in the brain structure of FtM transsexuals.

"It's the first time it has been shown that the brains of female-to-male transsexual people are masculinised," Guillamon says.

In a separate study, the team used the same technique to compare white matter in 18 male-to-female transsexual people with that in 19 males and 19 females. Surprisingly, in each transsexual person's brain the structure of the white matter in the four regions was halfway between that of the males and females (Journal of Psychiatric Research, DOI: 10.1016/j.jpsychires.2010.11.007).

"Their brains are not completely masculinised and not completely feminised, but they still feel female," says Guillamon.