Faculty of Psychology, University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland.
Department of Psychology, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King's College London, London, UK.
Sci Rep. 2020 Oct 30;10(1):18709. doi: 10.1038/s41598-020-74886-0.
The cross-sex shift hypothesis predicts that gay men should perform more like heterosexual women on important neurocognitive tasks on which men score higher than women, such as mental rotation. Studies also suggest sex differences exist in the neural correlates of mental rotation. However, no studies have taken sexual orientation into account or considered within-group variation attributable to recalled gender nonconformity (a developmental trait reliably associated with human nonheterosexuality). We quantified the neural correlates of mental rotation by comparing two groups of gay men, gender conforming (n = 23) and gender nonconforming (n = 23), to gender conforming heterosexual men (n = 22) and women (n = 22). We observed a sex difference between heterosexual men and women in the premotor cortex/supplementary motor cortex and left medial superior frontal gyrus. We also observed a sex difference as well as a cross-sex shift in gay men who recalled being gender nonconforming as children in the right superior frontal gyrus, right angular gyrus, right amygdala/parahippocampal gyrus, and bilaterally in the middle temporal gyrus and precuneus. Thus, cross-sex shifts may be associated with underlying developmental factors which are associated with sexual orientation (such as gender nonconformity). The results also suggest that gay men should not be studied as a homogenous group.
跨性别转变假说预测，在男性比女性得分更高的重要神经认知任务上，男同性恋者的表现应该更像异性恋女性，例如心理旋转。研究还表明，心理旋转的神经相关性存在性别差异。然而，没有研究考虑性取向，也没有考虑到归因于回忆起的性别不一致（与人类非异性恋可靠相关的一种发展特征）的组内变异。我们通过比较两组男同性恋者（性别一致的 23 名，性别不一致的 23 名）、性别一致的异性恋男性（22 名）和女性（22 名），来量化心理旋转的神经相关性。我们观察到异性恋男性和女性在运动前皮层/辅助运动皮层和左内侧额上回存在性别差异。我们还观察到，在回忆起小时候性别不一致的男同性恋者中，存在性别差异以及跨性别转变，这些人在右额上回、右角回、右杏仁核/海马旁回以及双侧颞中回和楔前叶中存在这种转变。因此，跨性别转变可能与性取向相关的潜在发育因素有关（例如性别不一致）。研究结果还表明，不应将男同性恋者作为一个同质群体进行研究。
