Change search
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf
Neural Systems for Own-body Processing Align with Gender Identity Rather Than Birth-assigned Sex
Stockholm University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Psychology, Biological psychology.
Show others and affiliations
Number of Authors: 72020 (English)In: Cerebral Cortex, ISSN 1047-3211, E-ISSN 1460-2199, Vol. 30, no 5, p. 2897-2909Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

Gender identity is a core aspect of self-identity and is usually congruent with birth-assigned sex and own body sex-perception. The neuronal circuits underlying gender identity are unknown, but greater awareness of transgenderism has sparked interest in studying these circuits. We did this by comparing brain activation and connectivity in transgender individuals (for whom gender identity and birth-assigned sex are incongruent) with that in cisgender controls (for whom they are congruent) when performing a body self-identification task during functional magnetic resonance imaging. Thirty transgender and 30 cisgender participants viewed images of their own bodies and bodies morphed in sex toward or opposite to birth-assigned sex, rating each image to the degree they identified with it. While controls identified with images of themselves, transgender individuals identified with images morphed opposite to their birth-assigned sex. After covarying out the effect of self-similarity ratings, both groups activated similar self- and body-processing systems when viewing bodies that aligned with their gender identity rather than birth-assigned sex. Additionally, transgender participants had greater limbic involvement when viewing ambiguous, androgynous images of themselves morphed toward their gender identity. These results shed light on underlying self-processing networks specific to gender identity and uncover additional involvement of emotional processing in transgender individuals.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2020. Vol. 30, no 5, p. 2897-2909
Keywords [en]
body perception, functional magnetic resonance imaging, gender dysphoria, gender identity, gender incongruence, self-perception
National Category
Psychology Gender Studies
Research subject
Psychology
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:su:diva-183119DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhz282ISI: 000535907200013PubMedID: 31813993OAI: oai:DiVA.org:su-183119DiVA, id: diva2:1452488
Available from: 2020-07-06 Created: 2020-07-06 Last updated: 2022-02-26Bibliographically approved

Open Access in DiVA

No full text in DiVA

Other links

Publisher's full textPubMed

Authority records

Manzouri, Amirhossein

Search in DiVA

By author/editor
Manzouri, Amirhossein
By organisation
Biological psychology
In the same journal
Cerebral Cortex
PsychologyGender Studies

Search outside of DiVA

GoogleGoogle Scholar

doi
pubmed
urn-nbn

Altmetric score

doi
pubmed
urn-nbn
Total: 88 hits
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf