TY - JOUR
T1 - A new theory of gender dysphoria incorporating the distress, social behavioral, and body-ownership networks
AU - Gliske, Stephen V.
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was funded in part by National Institutes of Health Big Data to Knowledge mentored training Grant K01-ES-026839. I thank the many individuals who discussed this work and looked over this manuscript during drafting stages.
Funding Information:
Received May 15, 2019; accepted November 4, 2019; First published December 2, 2019. The author declares no competing financial interests. S.V.G. designed research; S.V.G. performed research; S.V.G. wrote the paper. This work was funded in part by National Institutes of Health Big Data to Knowledge mentored training Grant K01-ES-026839. Acknowledgments: I thank the many individuals who discussed this work and looked over this manuscript during drafting stages. Correspondence should be addressed to Stephen V. Gliske at Sgliske@umich.edu. https://doi.org/10.1523/ENEURO.0183-19.2019 Copyright © 2019 Gliske This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium provided that the original work is properly attributed.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 Gliske.
PY - 2019/11/1
Y1 - 2019/11/1
N2 - When postmortem studies related to transgender individuals were first published, little was known about the function of the various identified nuclei. Now, over 2 decades later, significant progress has been made associating function with specific brain regions, as well as in identifying networks associated with groups of behaviors. However, much of this progress has not been integrated into the general conceptualization of gender dysphoria in humans. I hypothesize that in individuals with gender dysphoria, the aspects of chronic distress, gender atypical behavior, and incongruence between perception of gender identity and external primary sex characteristics are all directly related to functional differences in associated brain networks. I evaluated previously published neuroscience data related to these aspects and the associated functional networks, along with other relevant information. I find that the brain networks that give individuals their ownership of body parts, that influence gender typical behavior, and that are involved in chronic distress are different in individuals with and without gender dysphoria, leading to a new theory—that gender dysphoria is a sensory perception condition, an alteration in the sense of gender influenced by the reflexive behavioral responses associated with each of these networks. This theory builds upon previous work that supports the relevance of the body-ownership network and that questions the relevance of cerebral sexual dimorphism in regard to gender dysphoria. However, my theory uses a hierarchical executive function model to incorporate multiple reflexive factors (body ownership, gender typical/atypical behavior, and chronic distress) with the cognitive, reflective process of gender identity.
AB - When postmortem studies related to transgender individuals were first published, little was known about the function of the various identified nuclei. Now, over 2 decades later, significant progress has been made associating function with specific brain regions, as well as in identifying networks associated with groups of behaviors. However, much of this progress has not been integrated into the general conceptualization of gender dysphoria in humans. I hypothesize that in individuals with gender dysphoria, the aspects of chronic distress, gender atypical behavior, and incongruence between perception of gender identity and external primary sex characteristics are all directly related to functional differences in associated brain networks. I evaluated previously published neuroscience data related to these aspects and the associated functional networks, along with other relevant information. I find that the brain networks that give individuals their ownership of body parts, that influence gender typical behavior, and that are involved in chronic distress are different in individuals with and without gender dysphoria, leading to a new theory—that gender dysphoria is a sensory perception condition, an alteration in the sense of gender influenced by the reflexive behavioral responses associated with each of these networks. This theory builds upon previous work that supports the relevance of the body-ownership network and that questions the relevance of cerebral sexual dimorphism in regard to gender dysphoria. However, my theory uses a hierarchical executive function model to incorporate multiple reflexive factors (body ownership, gender typical/atypical behavior, and chronic distress) with the cognitive, reflective process of gender identity.
KW - Body-ownership network
KW - Distress
KW - Gender dysphoria
KW - Sensory perception
KW - Social behavioral network
KW - Transgender
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85076447714&partnerID=8YFLogxK
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U2 - 10.1523/ENEURO.0183-19.2019
DO - 10.1523/ENEURO.0183-19.2019
M3 - Article
C2 - 31792116
AN - SCOPUS:85076447714
VL - 6
JO - eNeuro
JF - eNeuro
SN - 2373-2822
IS - 6
M1 - ENEURO.0183-19.2019
ER -