Why Not?
Sex differences leading to shaping of the Salience Network and thus regulating both body responses and "identity" formation
The hub of the Salience Network upon which we have commented many
times...the INSULA (known as Insular Cortex) is one of the most
important areas of brain function.
Researchers found that men
and women had opposite responses in the right front of the insular
cortex, a part of the brain integral to the experience of emotions,
blood pressure control and self-awareness.
http://journal.frontiersin.org/…/10.3…/fneur.2016.00087/full
This is such a critical brain area and we hadn’t expected to find such
strong differences between men and women’s brains,” said Paul Macey, the
study’s lead author. “
These sex related preferences are clearly
built upon other aspects of the Insula which must monitor and regulate
autonomic nervous system
On our Page we have posted on this
quite often recenty stressing that this network in the brain and this
'hub' , the insula, are central to both dysfunction in many
cognitive/neuropsychiatric conditions, at the core of awareness of body
image and thus the actual fibers from which "idenity' is woven.
Consequently, we had also previously posted on the finding that so
many seemingly disparate psychitatric diagnoses all found some
disfunction of one kind or another with the Salience Network
We
concluded ...based on what we know of sex diference literature and its
complete neglect of this area thus far...that here would be a place to
investigate the "gender dysphoria phenomenon in our society as it
relates to the typical manner in which sex differences have an effect on
the development and then ongoing function of this salience network
The authors say, "This raises several questions for us, such as why is
there a difference in brain pattern and might it reflect differences in
health issues for men and women, particularly in cardiovascular disease
variations,” Macey said.
Our own interpretation of the likely
eitology of these findings is that the salience network has a key role
in sexual dimorphism of many key behaviors. This is because it basically
is a determinant of "what is important" or "what matters to the
person".
When looked at more closely, this is where so called
'nature" and 'culture" meet. Given a context of sexually reproductive
hormonal signalling and "reward determination"...then the salience
network shapes itself accordingly to reflect the underlying reward
confirguration.
The :"cultural aspects" -- if unobstructed...by
either milieu or disfunction of the salience network...emerge directly
from the "nature" of the organism. The means by which this background
context is operative is through the hormonal balances produced in the
service of the underlying sexual reproductive nature of the
organism....male or female.
Our bodies (including our brains) are
set up within the sex and reproductive framework to "value" various
experiences above others...and to make those "salient". if that were
not true, then the species would not have survived.
This is
ultimately a function of among other key aspects of the sexual framework
of the person(genetically and hormonally) and the way in which they
might be set up to value experiences of one kind or another as rewarding
based on the manner in which those experiences play into those reward
aspects that go to the structuring and maintenance of the salience
network.
(And, yes, if there are underlying variance in the
configuration of the sexually reproductive operation of the
organism...they will lead, in turn, to differing shaping and operation
of the Salience network as it enables "identity" to arise....)
We
believe that the functional connectivity of this network is both a
cause and effect of hormonal levels. We also suspect strongly that HRT
with estradiol acts to shift the mode of operation of this network ...in
those who might benefit...to a more balanced effective level of
function.
The way the brain works has to ultimately reflect the
reward structuring of the networks in the brain. Key to this salience
network is the dopamine/oxytocin regulation of how reward helps thie
"wiring" arise and function.
One key aspect of our notion of
how this works is that "oxytocin" although it is always simplistically
regarded as some "love/trust/social bonding' determinant is actually
more generally a determinant of how we react to 'novelty"..and in the
life or an organism such as us, what is salient is precisely what is
"novel' insofar as it is unexpected and not within the previously
developed anticipatory schema of functioning in that situation.
A vast proportion of our daily lives are involved in these interactions
with others...that could be called social...for want of a better word
(we are not out in the forest alone), and the ongoing awareness of the
variance and novelty which has to result from interaction with other
creatures who are said to have "free will" so that we cannot possibly
anticipate clearly what they will do or say must fall within the
influence of oxytocin function.
Any hormonal impact on this
network and the insula. before birth, immedately after birth, and
forever afterward...will leave its mark, via ongoing experience and
structuring of this salience network, either for better or worse
There are a variety of conditions which are al simply the product of the
blind men of medicine touching the same elephant that they cannot see.
They label these conditions that they can diagnose as a whole range of
syndromes, depending on which specialty the physician is in.
To
find the answers, further study on this difference will be needed to
gain a better understanding of susceptibility to disease, efficacy of
drugs and even the course of normal development among all individuals,
not just between men and women.
“We believe that differences in
the structure and function of the insula in men and women might
contribute to different clinical symptoms in some medical disorders,”
Macey said
The Transgender Phenomenon, we believe, will
essentially only be beter understood by focus on this amazing 'insula"
and what it does...or doesn't do for a person.
Many who sense an
imbalance in the function of this network and 'identity' issues...much
broader in fact than simply 'gender"...are taking an active step to
remedy this imbalance by HRT. This is not because some magical spot in
the brain, specifically devoted to "gender identity" is causing them to
feel thaty they need to adjust and to adjust their 'gender idenitity.
Identity is not simply something superficial like putting a "hat on"
from a different team or looking at yourself and saying that's me"...nor
is it having an ongoing picture or image in our mind that we keep
conforming to.
If there were no sexes at all. an organism like
us who still have to develop an Identity that would allow that organism
to somehow relate its former acts and experience to the ones at present
and to the future. Identity is a way that an organism holds itself
together and creates those linkages for itself insofar as it unites the
manner in which it deals with past events and the current events and
projects into the future events it anticipates.
The structure of
identity includes many aspects, only one of which is what we talk about
as the 'gender"...but a multitude of others are involved...in the
coherence of the actions from past through present into the future. When
something is wrong with that "identity" structure (not the entire
brain)...then it shows up in various ways in various people...in the way
they perceive and react to situations, in their memory, and what they
attend do and how they attend...
The problem for many of the
neuropsychiatric diagnoses is an irregularity ( resulting either form
genetic, epigenetic gene expression, or hormonal or other influences
directly upon it ) with some element of fhat identify structure throwing
off the function of the entire 'identity" structure that sustains them
everyday in the world...and that "gender" is only one aspect of Identity
..among many that can be considered in order to remediate that
"identity" structure..;.and HRT does that...while it also is of benefit
to many in terms of attention, ASH, anxiety, and depression which other
aspects of the dysfunction of this Salience Network
So this study
is a promising first step...and reveals that others are beginning to
think of it the same way we have......as the place to look if you want
to engage in any intelligent and intelligibe talk about male and female
br
Of course this goes a long way to backing up our hunch that
some hormonal replacement of one kind or another can be expected to have
an impact on the way this network functions....because it cleartly does
already as indicated by the sex differences...and thuspossibly helop
remediate some of the symptoms associated with those other condition
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