Quote from: Crystal1556 on June 02, 2015, 12:15:32 PMI would love to hear from more people about this. Do you think that nerves wich lay dormant in the male body activate when the correct hormones are introduced ??
It may be interesting to spend some time looking through anatomy texts and reading about sexual differentiation in humans and other mammals. Allow me, if you will, a moment to nerd out before answering.
Male and female bodies are generally built pretty similar with (comparatively) relatively minor differences in shape. For example, the dorsal nerve of the clitoris and the dorsal nerve of the penis are both the terminus of the pudendal nerve. So it seems probable that, say, the FtM phenomena of phantom boner sensations has little to do with nerve dormancy and reactivation and more to do with how the brain interprets the sensations received. In particular, boners and other phantom genital sensations are reported by pre-HRT trans individuals as well as individuals on HRT. Similarly, the ilioinguinal nerve branches into the anterior labial and scrotal nerves and the posterior labial and scrotal nerves are branches of the pudendal. I've not gone for SRS consults as yet but presumably this is one reason why MtF penile inversion surgeries form the labia from scrotal tissue.
The main area where sex related switching occurs in mammals is the paramesonephric (ovaries to vagina) and mesonephric (testicular hook up) ducts. Along with the gonads these form an individual's primary sex characteristics, though both sexes retain portions of both ducts. T acts to boost the mesonephric (masculinization) and anti-Müllerian hormone (AMH) suppresses the paramesonephric (defeminization). SRY (the male coding gene on the Y chromosome) triggers both T and AMH expression as well as telling the gonads to be come testes rather than ovaries. The majority of changes in duct morphology happen in the area innervated by another branch of the pudendal nerve---the deep perineal---which kind of is along for the ride as the area changes shape. So, while my developmental anatomy is not the greatest, I'm willing to posit there's a post-penile to lower vagina wiring equivalence analogous to penis-clitoris and labial-scrotal innervation.
I've experienced, at times, sensations similar to what Tessa describes. My hypothesis for explaining this is there's the same gender specific processing in the brain for sensation from the deep perineal as there is for the dorsal and scrotal/labial branches of the pudendal. If that's correct, then it would follow such sensations are also not about neural dormancy and hormonal activation. I find it a bit scary the extent to which this aligns with the theory FtMs have male brains in female bodies and MtFs female brains in male bodies. But whether there's any plausible connection with BSTc or INAH 3 is beyond my neural anatomy.
Quote from: Tessa James on June 02, 2015, 01:56:27 PMWouldn't it be fun and informative to have a before and after transition neural body mapping image?
It would! I wonder if there might not be much difference between the before and after images---perhaps they would tend to be similar to cis persons of the felt gender rather than those of the birth assigned sex.
