Sponsored by the UCLA Brain Mapping Center Faculty
The focus of these talks is on advancing the use of brain mapping methods in neuroscience with an emphasis on contemporary issues of neuroplasticity, neurodevelopment, and biomarker development in neuropsychiatric disease.
Hosted By: Mirella Dapretto, Ph.D., Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, UCLA
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Ivanka Savic-Berglund, MD, PhD Professor of Neurology Karolinska Institute Stockholm, Sweden |
The etiology of gender dysphoria (GD) is traditionally believed to be linked to prenatal and early post-natal sex hormone exposure. However, brain imaging studies employed to test this notion, while being largely consistent in showing structural and functional differences among cisgender male and female controls, seem rather inconsistent with respect to findings in subjects with GD. Another fundamental problem is that the majority of the available brain imaging data do not address the principal feature of GD, a strong perception of incongruence between one’s sense of self and one’s body. The talk presents new brain imaging data challenging the general view about a "sex-atypical" cerebral dimorphism in GD and proposes that a hallmark for this condition is functional and structural hypo-connection within self-own body perception processing networks.
