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Sex and gender are often conflated or equated in everyday conversation, and most American adults to believe A person's gender is determined by the sex assigned at birth. But a new study of nearly 5,000 9- and 10-year-olds found that sex and gender map onto different parts of the brain.
The study provides the first insight into how sex and gender can have “measurable and unique effects” on the brain, the study authors say, just as other experiences have been shown to shape the brain.
“Going forward, if we want to better understand the brain, we need to consider both sexes and genders separately,” said Dr. Elvish Damala. Assistant Professor Psychiatry at the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research and Zucker Hillside Hospital in Glen Oaks, California, and co-author of the study, published Friday in the journal Science Advances.
In the new study, researchers have revealed that sex is assigned to the child at birth. In the US, clinicians perform this procedure on the penis. According to the study, most people are classified as female or male; The rest are intersex, a person whose sexual or reproductive organs do not fit this male/female binary.
The researchers defined gender as an individual's attitudes, feelings and behavior as well as socially constructed roles. In particular, he pointed out that gender is not binary, which means that not all people identify as female or male.
Both sex and gender are an integral part of the human experience. They are key to how people understand others and understand themselves. Both can affect behavior and health, the authors of the study.
The researchers looked at brain imaging data from 4,757 children in the United States, 2,315 assigned female at birth and 2,442 assigned male at birth, ages 9 and 10, and this subgroup. Adolescent cognitive development (ABCD) studyThe largest longitudinal study of mental development and child health in the United States. Over a 10-year period, children in the ABCD study underwent comprehensive neuroimaging, behavioral, developmental, and cognitive assessments.
In addition to tests such as MRIs, the scientists conducted gender-specific surveys of the children and their parents, both at the start of the study and then a year later. The children were asked how they describe their gender and how they feel about it. The parents were asked about the child's sexual behavior during the game and whether the child had anything Gender dysphoriaA term used by mental health professionals to describe clinically significant anxiety because a person's perception of their gender does not match the gender they were assigned at birth.
Study co-author Dr. Danny S. Bassett, a professor in the Department of Bioengineering, Electrical and Systems Engineering, Physics and Astronomy, Neurology, and Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania, said parents were an integral part of the study.
“When children have a different gender identity or gender expression, it affects how their parents and other caregivers and their friends and family … and others interact with them,” Bassett said. A parent's understanding of a child's gender gives researchers a better understanding of the child's social environment and how it affects their brain development.
The authors built a model that predicts children's sexuality and uses artificial intelligence called machine learning to predict sexuality by scanning their brains. When the researchers scanned the children's brains, the results showed that sex affected different brain regions involved in visual processing, sensory processing and motor control, which allows an individual to organize and integrate information. Over time.
Gender appears to influence some of the more emotion-specific networks associated with sex, but it appears to have a broader effect and can be detected in a variety of brain networks involved in executive function, including attention, social cognition, and emotional processing. .
“Being able to map how gender maps work in the brain basically tells us that gender affects our brains,” Demala said.
The structure of a person's brain can be shaped by occupation and experience. Research London taxi drivers – who have to undergo extensive tests to show they can navigate the city's streets without a map or GPS – appear to have significantly larger posterior hippocampi, the part of the brain associated with spatial memory and navigation, than humans. Non-taxi drivers.
“Similarly, as individuals and as humans, we are conscious of ourselves and our gender. So it makes sense that gender is imprinted in our minds,” Demala said.
What the new research can't do is predict what gender a person might identify as beyond a specific snapshot of time spanned by scans and surveys. Gender, the authors say, is not necessarily static, and a person's perception of their gender can change throughout their lifetime.
The research cannot determine how things in a person's environment affect their brain function in terms of gender and sex, nor can it determine what a person's sexual orientation might be.
“Sexual orientation is independent of gender and sex,” Bassett said, and can be shaped differently in the brain.
The researchers say they hope to one day learn more about how sex and gender interact in a person's life and how they influence each other and the brain throughout life. They also hope to see how different cultures affect a person's gender and brain development.
A 2022 election Most American adults — and most conservatives — believe that a person's gender is determined by the sex they were assigned at birth. The difference is key. Gender-affirming care, treatment for people who identify as a different sex than they were assigned at birth. Conservative politicians b Bans register no On such care, and About half States in the United States have enacted bans on gender-affirming care for minors.
The study did not look at whether sex or gender matched or mismatched any of the study participants. Instead, it looks at self- and parent-reported measures of the child's binary sex and gender. If sex and gender were not matched, the study could not provide any different findings.
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“Moving forward, the hope is that we can inspire other scientists to think about science and gender by analyzing data sets in their programs and research,” said Dr. Avram Holmes, associate professor of the study. Psychiatry at Rutgers University.
The field of neuroscience is just beginning to recognize and address the existence of biases and barriers to inclusion in research, Holmes said.
A fuller understanding of how the brain works in relation to sex and sexuality could have practical implications and help scientists find better ways to treat brain-related diseases. For example, the study found that those assigned male at birth were more likely to be diagnosed with substance use and attention deficit disorders.
“Sex and gender don't necessarily drive disease rates, but the cultures people are embedded in can influence whether or not they develop a particular disease,” Holmes says. “So the kinds of environmental pressures a child is exposed to during development may increase or decrease their risk of developing diseases outside of their initial brain biology.”