Changes to Brain Structure and Volume

[Magnus]

Changing your sex changes your brain: influences of testosterone and estrogen on adult human brain structure.

European Journal of Endocrinology (2006) 155 S107-S114 ISSN 0804-4643

http://www.eje.org/content/155/suppl_1/S107.full.pdf#bmkbib6

[peky]

The title is misleading, no change in sex took place....the brain was already feminized in the MTF and masculinized in the case of the FTM..right?...what the study shows is further change on the brain driven by sex steroids...

What would be interested to know is how the brain of a cis male would change when exposed to anti-androgens and estrogen...would it feminize just as the MTF or not? I am posing this question because the possibility exists that the observed changes in the MTF sample is due to an already "primed" state.

[SophiePeters]

i read somewhere that showed a male brain exposed to transition HRT would begin to develop dysphoria with the changes and ultimately detransition.   the study showed in those cases it was usually around the fabled 3 month make or break for transition.   likewise that only 1% of detransitioners after the 3 months stayed de-transitoned.   as for mental changes the hormonal shift would not change identity if it did then well trans-individuals simply would not exist without severe imbalances in hormones. from what i have read the mental changes are very subtle and only assist in the trans individuals personal growth.   this is quite like my own experience thus far which felt like i was really rediscovering myself and growing as a person.   the changes that i would attribute to hormonal shift would be the emotional center of the brain being stimulated and visual perspectives of the world around me.  I became more creative and less mathmatical my bisexuality went from 70 30 to 50 50.  during my 3 month detransition for cryo-storage i noticed several of these shifting back the other direction.   Now its entirely possible some of this phenomenon i experienced was actually me defaulting to how i know to survive with dysphoria    as it got really bad during detransition.  some things though such as the sexuality shift on the spectrum did revert via hormones i am confident in that and i truly tried to cry during the time frame and simply could not.   personally i believe mental changes during transition are mostly like any other puberty the individual growing and becoming who they are i think hormones play a very subtle role in that.  my male puberty for instance i never felt like i was growing always felt like i was stuck never developing into a person which is quite the opposite experiences during even the first few weeks of my female puberty. 

[xchristine]

The title is misleading, no change in sex took place....the brain was already feminized in the MTF and masculinized in the case of the FTM..right?...what the study shows is further change on the brain driven by sex steroids...

What would be interested to know is how the brain of a cis male would change when exposed to anti-androgens and estrogen...would it feminize just as the MTF or not? I am posing this question because the possibility exists that the observed changes in the MTF sample is due to an already "primed" state.

I agree with this ...
Our brain is already primed from fetus stages...

[Magnus]

I didn't share this information to support the claims of there being no differentiation before the HRT (though I can understand how that would overshadow the other details). Other sources disprove such statements overwhelmingly. Rather, I personally found it interesting because of the physiological changes occurring after the HRT treatments for all of those being studied and I thought that others might be interested to be informed about these changes too.

A lot of people are told this and that won't change (after) HRT when in fact they do (case in point, I was told that my feet would not grow but they in fact have etc).

That's all. I personally know it never crossed my mind of there being physiological (not just psychological) changes to my brain simply because of testosterone. Wouldn't have influenced my decision either way but again, its just an interesting piece of information.

Further, of course we know that we've never been female (FTM) or male (MTF), but they don't understand that (I'm realizing more and more that the only people that could ever really understand any of this are one of us ourselves. You can try and empathize as much as you want too, but you'll still only be empathizing and not actually understanding it and because that requires personal experience. I hope that makes sense)... you also have to be aware that all medical journals are given in the purely analytical and clinical tone. Very different than 'plain English'.

[Jack_M]

I think we're maybe jumping the gun here. It's not suggesting that psychological changes take place so much as explaining physical changes, as in increased mass for FTM and decreased for MTF. However, psychological changes can of course occur as a result of those changes, but that's not so scientifically measurable. Also it's worth noting that, medically, FTMs were female as that is the physiological profile. So it is more correct, from a medical perspective, to refer to FTMs and MTFs as having never been women or men respectively but cannot be stated that they weren't ever female or male.

Opinions differ in the community, of course, and each to their own, but medically speaking it's incorrect to speak in this way. So I can't fault the paper from a scientific perspective. It's talking about a sex change procedure and in fact I find it positive to refer to it as such as it is specifically focusing on HRT. So it's progressive in assuming HRT is enough to consider someone having changed their sex from female/male to male/female without going into all the potential surgeries. From a physiological stand point, it's actually correct to say that one is never fully male or female following transition because certain traits will always remain, generally with regard to bone structure. However, the chemical makeup is enough for this paper to essentially ignore those aspects and have the body be referred to as male or female based on chemical makeup alone.

I think we can all get quite hypersensitive sometimes. This is a purely a physiological analysis examining the effects of HRT and is, in fact, quite interesting! We're still in early stages of understanding everything HRT does and even the actual risks are often unknowns or maybes, so it's good to know that there is research going on to monitor the effects so we can have solid data for risks and definitive changes to be noted to give people as much information as possible before they sign off the consent forms for HRT.

[SophiePeters]

Well said magnus.   there are some really interesting articles out there that show you actually change at a cellular level and in fact although DNA wont change, the expression of your DNA can and will change at varying degrees.   one of my friends who is in  phd program for biochemical engineering completely blew my mind explaining it all to me pretransition.   when i told my friends and explained it to them they had radical shifts in how they viewed trans individuals realizing while yes there are visible differences, at a cellular level they quite literally become the desired gender.  The study you showed does make a lot of sense though, the brain is a muscle and estrogen lessens muscle while testosterone increases muscle.  it is reasonable to assume the brain is not immune to this effect.   brain size though has very little to do with brain function.  i personally would love to monitor my brainwaves and  brain function throughout transition i think that would be fascinating.

[peky]

Well said magnus.   there are some really interesting articles out there that show you actually change at a cellular level and in fact although DNA wont change, the expression of your DNA can and will change at varying degrees.   one of my friends who is in  phd program for biochemical engineering completely blew my mind explaining it all to me pretransition.   when i told my friends and explained it to them they had radical shifts in how they viewed trans individuals realizing while yes there are visible differences, at a cellular level they quite literally become the desired gender.  The study you showed does make a lot of sense though, the brain is a muscle and estrogen lessens muscle while testosterone increases muscle.  it is reasonable to assume the brain is not immune to this effect.   brain size though has very little to do with brain function.  i personally would love to monitor my brainwaves and  brain function throughout transition i think that would be fascinating.

No honey the brain is no a muscle, the brain is nervous tissue made up by glial and neurons and a few ependymal cells that line the ventricles of the brain.

Yet, the study does shows that the brain volume changes in response to steroid exposure in specific ways.

Almost all hormones, including the steroidal ones, affect gene expression by up regulation, down regulation, silencing, etc. In addition, hormones affect other cellular functions such as protein translation, mRNA stability, mitochondria respiration, etc., and of course all these means tissue grow, remodeling, or shrinking....

and as we all know by experience hormones change our emotions, feelings, cognition, sexual arousal, etc.

Hormone specific changes in brain: anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, electrophysiology, pharmacology, and metabolism have been all well documented. The conclusion from all theses studies is that the MTF brain is like that of cis-females, and the brain of FTM is like those of cis-males...add the appropriate hormones, E for MTF and T for FTM, and the similarities become even greater

So, why is all of this important?

In my humble opinion it demonstrate that we the transgender folks of the world are what we are not by choice, no by being crazy, not by being perverts, but just by a biological mishap

[xchristine]

I agree with peky
I have read a lot of material that was basically saying the
Same things from studying us very closely

[Rachel]

All I can say is HRT feels like a warm snug glove on a cold winter day. Some adjectives would be:
Calm, clear, much less stress and smiles. I always felt I was on pins and needles and that feeling is gone.