14 votes

Predictive pattern classification can distinguish gender identity subtypes from behavior and brain imaging

5 comments

  1. drannex
    (edited )
    Link
    This is the best most illustrious slide from the presentation/paper This paper is incredibly interesting as it shows that transgender individuals have signs of their known gender identity from an...

    This is the best most illustrious slide from the presentation/paper

    Trans women on the other hand were best identified based on a widespread pattern involving temporal, parietal, occipital and frontal areas.

    [We were] able to predict both trans women and trans men as distinct gender groups, with prediction accuracies above chance level for all four groups.

    This paper is incredibly interesting as it shows that transgender individuals have signs of their known gender identity from an analysis of the brain, but it also went farther and outlined how they discovered at minimum nine different gender expressions.

    If anyone ever says that being trans is "all in their heard" they aren't wrong, just not in the way that they likely want or mean.

    5 votes
  2. Staross
    (edited )
    Link
    Not a very surprising result ; the mind supervenes on the brain, meaning you can't have a different mind-state unless you've got also a different brain-state. When you think about the number 2...

    Not a very surprising result ; the mind supervenes on the brain, meaning you can't have a different mind-state unless you've got also a different brain-state. When you think about the number 2 there's a in-principle detectable difference in your brain activity compared with you thinking about the number 3.

    That said after a quick glance at the paper I'm a bit worried about overfitting, it seems the main result is not on a test set.

    4 votes
  3. [3]
    Whom
    Link
    The truscum of the future will love this. I'm not looking forward to it.

    The truscum of the future will love this.

    I'm not looking forward to it.

    3 votes
    1. [2]
      MimicSquid
      Link Parent
      Can you explain a bit more about your concern? While it's not the focus of the study, the intro does mention that there's work in progress to remove gender dysphoria as a descriptor entirely: That...

      Can you explain a bit more about your concern? While it's not the focus of the study, the intro does mention that there's work in progress to remove gender dysphoria as a descriptor entirely:

      To reduce stigma and facilitate access to relevant health care needs for transgender persons, the plan for the ICD-11 is to add gender incongruence to the sexual health section and remove gender dysphoria entirely (Reed et al. 2016).

      That said,

      all transgender participants fulfilled diagnostic criteria for gender dysphoria, as diagnosed by a board-certified mental-health professional.

      Is it that you'd have preferred a trans group for this study that weren't all dyphoric?

      2 votes
      1. Whom
        Link Parent
        My thought is more that if there's a brain scan that says if you're trans or not (regardless of if it's actually trying to be prescriptive with that at all), there will be a massive group arguing...

        My thought is more that if there's a brain scan that says if you're trans or not (regardless of if it's actually trying to be prescriptive with that at all), there will be a massive group arguing that those it picks out are the only real trans people and the rest of us are just snowflakes or whatever. Regardless of how accurate it is, I believe pretty firmly that gender is so complicated and multifaceted that there will be those who identify as a gender other than the one assigned to them who do not show whatever difference in their brains.

        I guess at that point they wouldn't be truscum anymore but instead some other kind of gatekeeper.

        I just read the introduction and conclusion so I don't know if this is something that can be done in a practical way, but I can also imagine it being put to use maliciously by less than queer friendly governments, possibly undermining the safety of the closet. It just scares me.

        11 votes