Department of Neurological, Neurosurgical and Behavioural Sciences, University of Siena, Siena, Italy.
Neuroendocrinology. 2012;96(3):188-93. doi: 10.1159/000342001. Epub 2012 Sep 14.
BACKGROUND/AIMS: Transsexualism is a gender identity disorder whose symptomatology could involve cognitive, neurobiological and psychological variance from biological sex standard. Several evidences support the hypothesis of a structural and functional brain reorganization in transgender subjects, with a different impact for male-to-female and female-to-male (FtM) subjects. Here we used resting-state fMRI to understand the similarities between the spontaneous brain connectivity of an untreated FtM subject and two male and female control groups.
Both seed-voxel and atlas-based region-of-interest (ROI) approaches were used.
Brain areas sensitive to gender dimorphism like left lingual gyrus and precuneus showed strong similarities between the FtM subject and female control group with respect to control males, with comparable extension and location of functional connectivity maps. ROI analysis confirmed this evidence, highlighting a greater pattern of differences between the FtM subject and males and the FtM subject and females. No difference between seed-voxel results in the FtM subject and females was found.
These data partially support the idea that untreated FtM transgender shows a functional connectivity profile comparable to female control subjects.
背景/目的：易性症是一种性别认同障碍，其症状可能涉及认知、神经生物学和心理与生物性别标准的差异。有几项证据支持跨性别者大脑结构和功能重组的假说，男性向女性（MtF）和女性向男性（FtM）的影响不同。在这里，我们使用静息态 fMRI 来了解未经治疗的 FtM 受试者的自发脑连接与两个男性和女性对照组之间的相似性。
使用种子点和基于图谱的感兴趣区（ROI）方法。
对性别二态性敏感的脑区，如左侧舌回和楔前叶，与女性对照组相比，与男性对照组相比，FtM 受试者表现出强烈的相似性，功能连接图的扩展和位置相当。ROI 分析证实了这一证据，突出了 FtM 受试者与男性和 FtM 受试者与女性之间更大的差异模式。在 FtM 受试者和女性之间没有发现种子点结果的差异。
这些数据部分支持未经治疗的 FtM 跨性别者表现出与女性对照组相似的功能连接模式的观点。
