Does gender identity leave a measurable trace in the way we think, remember, or perceive space? A team at the gender identity clinic of a university in Türkiye set out to answer this with a full neuropsychological battery applied to 81 adults. The conclusion, published in Brain Sciences, is nuanced: differences exist, but they are small, confined to certain domains, and overlap substantially between groups.
Four groups, one battery of tests
The study included 14 transgender women, 39 transgender men, 13 cisgender women, and 15 cisgender men, the latter matched for age and education. All completed standardized tests of visuospatial abilities, executive functions and processing speed, working memory, and verbal fluency.
The choice of Türkiye is not accidental. Most evidence on cognition in transgender people comes from Western samples, and the authors note that structural stigma and minority stress can influence both cognitive performance and participation in research itself.
Differences in the visuospatial domain, overlap everywhere
The results showed group differences in two domains. On the visuospatial tests (judgment of line orientation and the Rey-Osterrieth complex figure), both transgender groups scored below both cisgender groups. On executive control (Trail Making Test, part B), the ordering between groups differed.
But the authors stress the essential point: the distributions overlapped substantially across all domains. There were no significant differences in processing speed, working memory, or verbal fluency, and no clear association was found between hormone therapy status and performance.
A message against pathologization
The interpretation the researchers propose is deliberately cautious and non-pathologizing. The observed differences should not be read as a correspondence between cognitive performance and gender identity or sex assigned at birth. On the contrary, they point to a context-sensitive approach in which sociocultural factors weigh more than any supposed inherent deficit.
The study is retrospective and small in size, and its authors call for longitudinal and cross-cultural research that incorporates psychosocial variables. Even so, it offers a valuable piece of evidence: gender identity does not translate into a fixed cognitive profile, and the differences, when they exist, coexist with a large overlap between people.
Source: Yilmaz Abayli H, Sisman E, Kocaayan FS, Polat A. Neuropsychological Functioning in Transgender Adults: Evidence from a University-Based Gender Identity Clinic in Türkiye. Brain Sciences. 2026;16(9):918.
