Tanoomba's Toxic Tank of Traducement

Tanoomba said:

Here's the study about cortical thickness in the brain.
Here's the one about hypothalamic response.

I honestly don't know how to check if they've been peer-reviewed.

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Briefly skimmed second so far. Actually seems like an interesting study.

You seriously don't know what a peer reviewed scientific paper is???

Skanda said:

Alright, since I'm apparently not allowed to post unspoilered images if scat in the Rickshaw anymore have some dick.

I know this is safe since it's unmoderated in at least one other RR thread.

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WTF I thought we agreed on no doxxing.

fanaskin said:

you don't mean it this way but you can through use and repetition based on social and enviromental factors.

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Sounds to me like you're talking about neural pathways which yes, can absolutely be strengthened or deteriorated or re-mapped based on what they're exposed to. Someone who's blind, for example, can have neural receptors based on touch spread out into areas of the brain intended for visual input. This not only leads to a greater ability to feel small differences but to being able to "visualize" what is being felt. I read this book years ago for a class and I loved it. It mentions technology that allowed monochrome lo-res video to be transmitted to the brain of a blind person via electric pulses sent to the surface of their tongue, essentially allowing them to "see". Here's the current state of that tech, or so Google tells me. Brain plasticity is absolutely incredible. But I've never seen anything that suggested that the size and shape of parts of the brain change due to neural plasticity.

Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of articles talking about "changing the shape of your brain", but they're pretty much exaggerating and using metaphor for the sake of communicability. Here's the physical aspect of what neural plasticity is:

• Active brain regions get more blood flow, since they need more oxygen and glucose.
• The genes inside neurons get more or less active depending on the frequency with which the neuron fires.
• Neural connections that aren’t active weaken and wither. Use it or lose it.

The synapses, connections between neurons, get more sensitive when routinely activated simultaneously, and new neurons are formed, producing thicker neural layers, in busy regions. Neurons that fire together, wire together.

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Notice that none of that actually affects the physical shape of the brain. There's certainly nothing that suggests you can change the shape of your cortex. Here's a quote from one of the studies I linked:

CTh studies have shown that females have a thicker cortex than males, even in studies that control for ICV, body size, and age

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This is a basic biological difference between men and women, and yet you get consistently different results from transgender people, in ways that can't be faked or tricked with "feelings".

Science has an explanation.

Chris said:

Start taking it to PMs then. Most of us don't want to read it, as evidenced by the eat shit and die emojis.

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No. If people don't want to read it they can put on their big boy pants and put me on ignore or scroll past my posts.

Chris said:

I scroll past your posts, it's usually 3-4 pages if I'm lucky. I can't ignore everyone replying to you either.

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You absolutely can. There is nothing stopping you. Your mouse wheel can handle it, I assure you.

Chris said:

People hate you so much I don't understand how you think you can convincd them. If you chilled out a bit maybe they would be more open to listening to you.

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I am chilled out. I haven't posted anything "controversial" in months. Then I was explicitly invited to give my opinion, which organically flowed into a discussion that Fanaskin was very engaged in.

It's the harassment patrol who loses their shit and ruins threads. I wasn't responsible for them before and I'm sure not responsible for them now.

Also, it's not news to me that some people will never be convinced that they're wrong about something. This is the internet. But again, sparring is fun. If I can make a stronger case than the person I'm debating something with, then that's a success.

@Titan_Atlas

I would say even more so if you are diagnosing based on the feeling/emotions of a mentally ill person. Do you believe a schizophrenic when they say someone is following them? I mean they REALLY do think someone is following them.

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No, but a professional can diagnose a person who's schizophrenic by talking to them and learning about their feelings and behavior, right? It's not a matter of believing them when they say they're believing followed, it's a matter of acknowledging that there's a reason they believe it.

"Mentally ill" is a loose term (and one that the American Psychiatric Association no longer uses to describe trans people) that encompasses a wide range of conditions that affect people in a wide variety of ways. It does NOT mean "this person is crazy and can't be trusted to answer questions about himself in order to make a diagnosis".

I'll ask you again to consider the studies that were done that showed that trans people's brains were different from regular people and that they reacted to a chemical scent differently than regular people. They did these tests on people that had been DIAGNOSED with gender dysphoria. If the people they were observing had not actually suffered from GD, then they wouldn't have gotten the results they did. Clearly the diagnosis process was doing something right, and it's beyond foolish to insist that we simply can't diagnose GD because "feelings" are involved.