Current Events > How about this gender scheme.

(+) Yeah! (+)

ssjevot posted...

COVxy posted...

I've worked in nonhuman primates before, and am currently finishing my PhD in a lab that does primarily MR imaging. I don't need to read anything on wikipedia.

Already got my PhD. And clearly you do, since you apparently don't know any of the issues related to it.

Every method has limitations. Literally every method. Calcium indicators mess directly with neural dynamics. LFP's can come from literally anywhere in the brain. Doesn't mean they aren't useful. All neuroscience methods involved in collecting neural data require extensive signal processing, extensive statistical methodology. That's just the nature of recording from a complex biological environment.

You are throwing the baby out with the bathwater, for whatever reason, and doing so selectively.
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COVxy posted...

Every method has limitations. Literally every method. Calcium indicators mess directly with neural dynamics. LFP's can come from literally anywhere in the brain. Doesn't mean they aren't useful. All neuroscience methods involved in collecting neural data require extensive signal processing, extensive statistical methodology. That's just the nature of recording from a complex biological environment.

You are throwing the baby out with the bathwater, for whatever reason, and doing so selectively.

ssjevot posted...

I am not a fan of it myself, but think it is a useful measure for what I do and think the stuff we do with primates also has limitations.

They teach reading comprehension in your program or just how to make logical fallacies?
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Everything has limitations, right. Including behavioral measures as well, and especially including subjective evaluations by clinicians attempting to stick people into post-hoc categorizations of behavior.

So where have we gotten in this conversation exactly?

You framed the goal of individualized medicine in psychiatry as some silly notion that nobody in the field seriously considers, but in fact it is currently a booming field, especially in the qMRI field.

BOLD itself has problems, of course, and I never suggested that as a particularly proper measure for these things, but that's not to say that it's completely infeasible, as it does have quite a bit of convergent validity, and absolutely reflects neural activity, though filtered and indirectly.
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COVxy posted...

You framed the goal of individualized medicine in psychiatry as some silly notion that nobody in the field seriously considers, but in fact it is currently a booming field, especially in the qMRI field.

What? I never did anything like that. I said you can't use a "brain scan" to gatekeep who can and cannot be diagnosed with GD. Stop making strawman arguments up.
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ssjevot posted...

There is zero reason to do it. No one in the field wants to do or would do what you are saying so the whole thing is idiotic.

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COVxy posted...

ssjevot posted...

There is zero reason to do it. No one in the field wants to do or would do what you are saying so the whole thing is idiotic.

Yeah no one wants to use fMRI as a basis for if someone can or cannot have depression or GD. I will stand by that statement.
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ssjevot posted...

COVxy posted...

ssjevot posted...

There is zero reason to do it. No one in the field wants to do or would do what you are saying so the whole thing is idiotic.

Yeah no one was to use fMRI as a basis for if someone can or cannot have depression or GD. I will stand by that statement.

"can and cannot"?

In any direct and earnest reading of the TC's message, there's no way to jump from what he is saying to something like "can and cannot", but moreover "does and does not", or "has type 1 or has type 2". You're the one who has been sticking this "gatekeeping" thing in there. Which may or may not be his goal, but certainly isn't written in the post.

Literally millions of dollars of grant funding is being funneled into projects attempting to use imaging to generate new methodology and test out existing methodology to stick people in the scanner and tell who "does or does not" or to empirically categorize people into biologically determined disorders.
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And seriously, read TC's post again. Not his attempt to moderate his position later. He makes it clear he wants people to be diagnosed in the basis of a "brain scan" and if the data doesn't meet his criteria they can't be reassigned. He wants to ignore behavioral measures for fMRI or whatever else and you're over here talking about some complimentary medicine approach that is doing nothing but obsfucating the awful proposal TC has.
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COVxy posted...

Literally millions of dollars of grant funding is being funneled into projects attempting to use imaging to generate new methodology and test out existing methodology to stick people in the scanner and tell who "does or does not" or to empirically categorize people into biologically determined disorders.

You realize by definition GD has a social component since genders are socially constructed right?
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this is why i'm a TERF. there is no "brain gender"
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ssjevot posted...

You realize by definition GD has a social component since genders are socially constructed right?

All available evidence suggests that gender identity is fairly immutable, both subjectively from qualitative reports from patients, but also experimentally in (unfortunately) humans and in rodents. Sexual dimorphism in the brain happens quite early in development (in-utero) and is relatively stable thereafter. Gender expression and gender roles are certainly socially constructed. But gender dysphoria wouldn't be such a big deal if it were possible to just decide to identify a different way, or move to a location where your interests are more related to your sex. The trouble is that immutable aspect.

My take from the literature is that there seems to be an organizational effect that's relatively immutable. Strikingly, MtF transwomen are are more common than FtM transmen, at least in some preliminary analyses of prevalence. Similarly this is true with autism, which also seems to have some role on sexual dimorphism as well.

Anyway, this discussion is kinda neither here nor there for the current topic and your objections, which is why it kinda devolved into a stream of consciousness.
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What's wrong with just considering brain imaging as one component of treatment? Two clients can have similar symptoms, but if scans reveal different biological mechanisms in play, we need to take that into account for optimal treatment.
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COVxy posted...

Gender expression and gender roles are certainly socially constructed. But gender dysphoria wouldn't be such a big deal if it were possible to just decide to identify a different way, or move to a location where your interests are more related to your sex. The trouble is that immutable aspect.

Nothing disagreeable here. It is only disagreeable if you attempt to use sexually dymorphic brain activity as a qualifying requirement to being diagnosed with GD which is what TC wants to do, and what my disagreement is with.
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Blue_Dream87 posted...

What's wrong with just considering brain imaging as one component of treatment? Two clients can have similar symptoms, but if scans reveal different biological mechanisms in play, we need to take that into account for optimal treatment.

No one objects to using that as part of a treatment, though the way you are talking about it is a bit strange since there will never not be different biological mechanisms in play (the question is the degree of difference, how to interpret that, and how much we actually understand how they contribute to the end behavior). The problem is TC wants to require a sepecific result of a brain scan to be reassigned
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ssjevot posted...

Nothing disagreeable here. It is only disagreeable if you attempt to use sexually dymorphic brain activity as a qualifying requirement to being diagnosed with GD which is what TC wants to do, and what my disagreement is with.

And what if those with sexually dimorphic features juxtaposed to their sex are fundamentally different than those without in terms of the underlying etiology of their condition, which seems plausible enough, no?

Seems to me that different course of treatment is entirely reasonable.
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I'll stick with male and female, thanks.
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You're making a lot of assumptions and in terms of treatment it doesn't neccessarily matter. Many different disorders or similar disorders with different causes can be helped by the same treatments. There really is no justifiable reason to refuse a treatment that evidence suggests works for individuals with a specific set of behavioral symptoms just because their brain scan didn't meet your criteria. I mean what do you want to do with those people? Say, sorry your brain doesn't look feminine enough, so your feelings aren't valid, go home and sleep it off? That sounds extreme but I don't get what you are proposing here.
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ssjevot posted...

Many different disorders or similar disorders with different causes can be helped by the same treatments.

With very low success rates overall. That's the big issue. Essentially, one reason that transition may have a high success rate is that the extremeness of the treatment is a selection in and of itself (SSRIs, for example, have a much higher success rate in people with extreme depression, and likely indicates vastly different conditions, not just depression, but two separate biological conditions). Those with mild symptoms certainly wouldn't go to such extremes, but are still experiencing discomfort.
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COVxy posted...

With very low success rates overall.

Objectively false. Look up the success rate of exposure therapy.

https://scholar.google.co.jp/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=exposure+therapy+effectiveness&oq=exposure+therapy+eff

Many very different disorders are helped greatly by this same treatment.
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Exposure therapy is pretty much clinical psychology's only claim to fame, and only treats anxiety disorders, and disorders stemming from such.

But I was moreover referencing biomedical treatments.
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COVxy posted...

Exposure therapy is pretty much clinical psychology's only claim to fame, and only treats anxiety disorders, and disorders stemming from such.

But I was moreover referencing biomedical treatments.

The number of caveats required to make your argument work makes it not very parsimonious, no?
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I should also mention that exposure therapy works well because fear conditioning was systematically worked out very early on, and actively disregards patient's subjective sense and deliberately makes them uncomfortable.

So the form of let the patient's subjective sense drive treatment type of holism doesn't make much sense.
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COVxy posted...

I should also mention that exposure therapy works well because fear conditioning was systematically worked out very early on, and actively disregards patient's subjective sense and deliberately makes them uncomfortable.

Okay, so does that make it not a very effective treatment for a number of disorders?
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ssjevot posted...

And seriously, read TC's post again. Not his attempt to moderate his position later. He makes it clear he wants people to be diagnosed in the basis of a "brain scan" and if the data doesn't meet his criteria they can't be reassigned. He wants to ignore behavioral measures for fMRI or whatever else and you're over here talking about some complimentary medicine approach that is doing nothing but obsfucating the awful proposal TC has.

people can identify however they want. what i'm saying is that science CAN identify a real situation, and can make a note of this through gendering to point out a real discrepancy

I made my point clearer in edits.

Either way, the heterogeneity of both the etiology and classification in mental health is a well established problem, which is why the NIMH abandoned the DSM and are pushing RDoC approaches.
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Fam_Fam posted...

ssjevot posted...

And seriously, read TC's post again. Not his attempt to moderate his position later. He makes it clear he wants people to be diagnosed in the basis of a "brain scan" and if the data doesn't meet his criteria they can't be reassigned. He wants to ignore behavioral measures for fMRI or whatever else and you're over here talking about some complimentary medicine approach that is doing nothing but obsfucating the awful proposal TC has.

people can identify however they want. what i'm saying is that science CAN identify a real situation, and can make a note of this through gendering to point out a real discrepancy

Yeah, you're reading way too much into the realness of forcing someone into a socially defined binary category from what is a biological continuum. Brains vary massively in many ways and this leads to extremely complex and poorly understood behavioral processes. You want to do a scan and force people into two categories that are completely socially constructed. Think about how ridiculous that sounds.
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ssjevot posted...

Fam_Fam posted...

ssjevot posted...

And seriously, read TC's post again. Not his attempt to moderate his position later. He makes it clear he wants people to be diagnosed in the basis of a "brain scan" and if the data doesn't meet his criteria they can't be reassigned. He wants to ignore behavioral measures for fMRI or whatever else and you're over here talking about some complimentary medicine approach that is doing nothing but obsfucating the awful proposal TC has.

people can identify however they want. what i'm saying is that science CAN identify a real situation, and can make a note of this through gendering to point out a real discrepancy

Yeah, you're reading way too much into the realness of forcing someone into a socially defined binary category from what is a biological continuum. Brains vary massively in many ways and this leads to extremely complex and poorly understood behavioral processes. You want to do a scan and force people into two categories that are completely socially constructed. Think about how ridiculous that sounds.

not completely socially constructed. as seen by the example i posted, people can see brains that fit closer to typical brains of one sex or the other.

gender ROLES are socially constructed, and should be reconsidered. but there certainly are brains that more fit with one sex or the other, as seen in the study I mentioned

You're again missing the point. That we would categorize people as one gender or another based on what their brain looks like would by its very definition be a social construct. This is especially problematic because you are giving two categories to a continuous variable. Brains vary such that you will have a number of people right on the border of wherever your arbitrary cutoff is. It is also extremely reductionist because you are ignoring all the different sources of variation and reducing it down to one overall variance ignoring the potential roles individual area differences may or may not play in gendered behavior.
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ssjevot posted...

You're again missing the point. That we would categorize people as one gender or another based on what their brain looks like would by its very definition be a social construct. This is especially problematic because you are giving two categories to a continuous variable. Brains vary such that you will have a number of people right on the border of wherever your arbitrary cutoff is. It is also extremely reductionist because you are ignoring all the different sources of variation and reducing it down to one overall variance ignoring the potential roles individual area differences may or may not play in gendered behavior.

like how we separate people based on genitals? in spite of the million other characteristics of a person?

Fam_Fam posted...

like how we separate people based on genitals? in spite of the million other characteristics of a person?

Yeah, gender is a social construct, glad you recognize that. It's sort of the basis for the entire idea behind trans individuals.
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_Lyonidias posted...

TwoDoorPunkCab posted...

this doesn't accommodate me as I identify as an attack helicopter

@0AbsoluteZero0 See? Now this is an actual, intended to be offensive use of the whole attack helicopter meme, and ISNT meant tongue in cheek like my post was.
Not that you care and will continue shitting on me for no reason, but whatever, I fucking tried.

I mean, Ill agree that its definitely more offensive the way it was used ITT. Still think its bad regardless of the context fwiw
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