XPost: alt.activism.children.molesters, comp.os.linux.advocacy, sac.politics   
   XPost: talk.politics.guns   
   From: usa@sicksociety.com   
      
   Sex and gender are often conflated or equated in everyday conversations,   
   and most American adults believe a person’s gender is determined by sex   
   assigned at birth. But a new study of nearly 5,000 9- and 10-year-olds   
   found that sex and gender map onto largely distinct parts of the brain.   
      
   The research gives a first insight into how sex and gender may have   
   “measurable and unique influences” on the brain, study authors said, just   
   as other experiences have been shown to shape the brain.   
      
   “Moving forward, we really need to consider both sexes and genders   
   separately if we better want to understand the brain,” said Dr. Elvisha   
   Dhamala, an assistant professor of psychiatry at the Feinstein Institutes   
   for Medical Research and the Zucker Hillside Hospital in Glen Oaks,   
   California, and a co-author of the study, published Friday in the journal   
   Science Advances.   
      
   The researchers on the new study defined sex as what was assigned to the   
   child at birth. In the US, clinicians make this assignment based on   
   genitalia. Most people are assigned either female or male, according to   
   the research; the rest are intersex, a person whose sexual or reproductive   
   anatomy doesn’t fit this male/female binary.   
      
   The researchers defined gender as an individual’s attitude, feelings and   
   behaviors, as well as socially constructed roles. They noted specifically   
   that gender is not binary, meaning not all people identify as either   
   female or male.   
      
   Both sex and gender are a core part of human experience. They’re key to   
   how people perceive others and how they understand themselves. Both can   
   influence behavior as well as health, the study authors say.   
      
   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, who were ages 9 and 10 and were a subset of the Adolescent Brain   
   Cognitive Development (ABCD) study, the largest long-term study of brain   
   development and child health in the United States. Over a period of 10   
   years, the children in the ABCD study underwent comprehensive   
   neuroimaging, behavioral, developmental and psychiatric assessments.   
      
   Beyond tests such as MRIs, the scientists did surveys of the children and   
   their parents that were focused on gender, both at the beginning of the   
   research and then a year later. The children were asked about how they   
   expressed their gender and how they felt about it. The parents were asked   
   about a child’s sex-typed behavior during play and whether the child had   
   any gender dysphoria, a term that mental health professionals use to   
   describe clinically significant distress felt because a person’s sense of   
   their gender does not match their sex the assigned at birth.   
      
   Parents were a key part of the study, said study co-author Dr. Dani S.   
   Bassett, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania with appointments   
   in the Departments of Bioengineering, Electrical & Systems Engineering,   
   Physics & Astronomy, Neurology, and Psychiatry.   
      
   “When kids have a particular kind of gender behavior or gender expression,   
   that will influence how their parents and also other caregivers and   
   friends and family … et cetera interact with them,” Bassett said.   
   Information about a parent’s perception of a child’s gender gives   
   researchers a better sense of the child’s social environment and how it   
   may affect their brain development.   
      
   The authors used a kind of artificial intelligence called machine learning   
   that built a model that could predict a child’s sex and reported gender   
   from their brain scan. When the researchers looked the children’s brain   
   scans, the results seemed to show that sex influenced different regions of   
   the brain that are involved in visual processing, sensory processing and   
   motor control and some regions involved in executive function, which lets   
   an individual organize and integrate information across time.   
      
   Gender seems to influence some of the more sensory-specific networks that   
   are associated with sex, but it also seems to have a broader influence and   
   can be detected on different brain networks involved in executive   
   function, including things like attention, social cognition and emotional   
   processing.   
      
   “The fact that we’re able to capture how gender maps onto the brain   
   basically just tells us that gender is influencing our brain,” Dhamala   
   said.   
      
   The structure of the human brain can be shaped by expertise and   
   experiences. Research on London taxi drivers — who must take extensive   
   tests to show that they can navigate the city’s streets without maps or   
   GPS — seems to show that they have significantly larger posterior   
   hippocampi, the part of the brain related to spatial memory and   
   navigation, than in people who aren’t taxi drivers.   
      
   “Similarly, as individuals and as humans, we are experts about ourselves   
   and our genders. So it makes sense that gender will also be mapped within   
   our brains,” Dhamala said.   
      
   What the new study cannot do is predict what gender a person may identify   
   with beyond one limited snapshot in time captured by the scans and   
   surveys. Gender, the authors note, is not something that is necessarily   
   static, and a person’s understanding of their gender can change throughout   
   their lifetime.   
      
   The study also can’t determine what things in someone’s environment will   
   influence their brain function in terms of sex or gender, nor can it   
   identify what a person’s sexual orientation might be.   
      
   “Sexual orientation is independent from gender and from sex,” Bassett   
   said, and it may be differently mapped in the brain.   
      
   The researchers say they hope to someday learn more about how sex and   
   gender interact in a person’s life and how they influence one another and   
   the brain throughout a lifetime. They also hope to see how different   
   cultures affect a person’s gender and their brain development.   
      
   A 2022 poll showed that most American adults — and the vast majority of   
   conservatives — believe that a person’s gender is determined by the sex   
   assigned at birth. The distinction is key to gender-affirming care,   
   medical treatment for people who identify as a gender that is different   
   from the one they were assigned at birth. Conservative politicians have   
   pushed for a record number of bans on such care, and nearly half of US   
   states have enacted bans on gender-affirming care for minors.   
      
   The study did not look at whether sex or gender were congruent or   
   incongruent in any study participant. Rather, it looked at the child’s   
   binary sex and gender across self- and parent-reported measures. The study   
   couldn’t provide any specific findings if sex and gender were incongruent.   
      
   “Going forward, the hope is that we can motivate other scientists to   
   consider science and gender in their analyses in the data collections in   
   their programs and research,” said study co-author Dr. Avram Holmes, an   
   associate professor of psychiatry at Rutgers University.   
      
   The field of neuroscience has only just begun to acknowledge and address   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)