Does the brain of a transgender person resemble more the sex assigned at birth, or the gender with which they identify? It is one of the central questions of the neuroscience of gender dysphoria, and a new study brings data to answer it. Researchers at Central South University (Changsha) have analysed with functional magnetic resonance imaging the brains of transgender women and compared them with those of cisgender men and women. The results were published in Scientific Reports (Springer Nature), one of the most cited open-access journals in the world.
A look at the brain at rest
The team studied the resting brain activity of 16 transgender women, 16 cisgender men and 16 cisgender women. Fifteen of the transgender participants were on gender-affirming hormone treatment at the time of the study. MRI makes it possible to observe two things: the activity of specific regions of the brain and how distant regions communicate with one another (so-called functional connectivity).
The researchers also analysed how these signals change over time, a dimension many earlier studies had left aside.
A pattern of its own, halfway between the two groups
In transgender women, higher-than-normal local activity was observed in the cerebellum, the precentral gyrus and the thalamus, regions linked to sensorimotor function. By contrast, they showed lower regional coherence in the precuneus cortex, an area associated with the perception of oneself.
As for connectivity between distant regions, transgender women presented weaker connections, above all in the ventral attention and sensorimotor networks. Most striking of all: on most of these measures, the values of cisgender men fell right in the middle. That is, a consistent gradient was observed of the type transgender woman < cisgender man < cisgender woman.
Which sex does the brain resemble more?
This pattern matters. It suggests that transgender women have a brain activity of their own, and a distinguishable one, but that in several regions it aligns more with that of cisgender men —the sex assigned at birth— than with that of cisgender women.
The authors read it in the light of the “own-body perception hypothesis”: gender dysphoria has a sensory component, related to the way the brain processes and recognises one’s own body. The sensorimotor and ventral attention networks, precisely those that appear altered, are key in that process.
Intense activity that compensates for weak connections
Another interesting finding is the combination of elevated local activity with weaker long-distance connections. For the authors, that local increase could be a compensatory mechanism: the brain would work harder in specific regions to make up for a less efficient integration of information between networks.
This form of organisation could reflect an adaptive mechanism of the brain to mediate between internal gender identity and the sensory signals arriving from the body.
A small study, a big question
The researchers are cautious. The sample is small (16 transgender women) and the MRI scan short, which limits the reproducibility of the results. Nor did they fully control for the effect of hormones, and a group of transgender men was missing in order to fully unravel the interaction between assigned sex and gender.
Even so, the work adds a relevant piece: it points to a biological basis for gender identity, with a distinguishable brain pattern that partly matches birth sex and partly is unique. Future studies with larger samples and all four groups (men and women, cis and transgender) will make it possible to refine these conclusions.
Source: Comparing local brain activity and distant functional connectivity in transgender women compared to cisgender controls. Li X, Xiang Z, Liu D, et al. Scientific Reports 2026;16:9253. DOI: 10.1038/s41598-026-40083-8.
Read the publication: Scientific Reports.
Article published on dosier.es. Image generated with artificial intelligence (marta ai → marta.syf.es).
