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Scientists able to give female rats male brain patterns after birth

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K

kirblar

Member
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/03/150331121249.htm

Prof. McCarthy and Nugent injected Dnmt inhibitors into a specific region of the female brains, a region known as the preoptic area, or POA. In every species that's been studied, including humans, the POA plays a key role in governing male sexual behavior. The injections occurred after the first week of birth, the time when the window for brain sexual differentiation was thought to have been closed. Despite this, the preoptic area in these animals was transformed, and took on structural characteristics of a male rat. The female rats also behaved differently, displaying sexual behavior typical of male rats. In another experiment, they genetically deleted the Dnmt gene in female mice; these animals also showed male behavior patterns.
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This is really, really interesting and exciting stuff- they had believed that this type of alteration was not possible outside of the womb, but have discovered that they can give the female rats male behavior patterns by altering them even after they're born. I'm curious if their next experiment will be to find when the "cut-off'' point is for this type of alteration.

edit: Found the link to the full article- http://www.nature.com/articles/nn.3988.epdf?shared_access_token=8jA4_tUtRR-syFAPc2BBidRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0O5Sa17PwxeSdPz2qBv6vanxusGjeS3u3ugroTKYMJlFJrlbrovLlJCRaZQxROjM9rhhuhj4ncTxVAck7aag2Of-Gw_opTc4XhMFgA5NuhinV7kFxKGz0AUbEBMkBkv-Brab2_9QkmHznC6ATwTiOiObKNORGo6VuYPQH6t290HWA%3D%3D
 
E

Escape Goat

Member
Brain switch!

zDF56tV.jpg


-oob.
 
S

Syriel

Member
Liferebooted said:
I'm confused, does this make the female rats into lesbians wanting other female rats? o.0
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Sounds more like a sex change of the brain.

The result would be a male brain in a female body.

It does raise interesting ethical questions though. If something like this ever made its way to humans, could doctors tell if the "brain gender" matched the "physical sex" of a baby before birth? Could it be changed to match if it didn't?

Would any of that be ethical? Would it be ethical to NOT do so?
 
B

BreezyLimbo

Banned
Syriel said:
Sounds more like a sex change of the brain.

The result would be a male brain in a female body.

It does raise interesting ethical questions though. If something like this ever made its way to humans, could doctors tell if the "brain gender" matched the "physical sex" of a baby before birth? Could it be changed to match if it didn't?

Would any of that be ethical? Would it be ethical to NOT do so?
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That is the question...if it was used on babies or children who were experiencing gender dysphoria....would it be unethical? Would it be a 'cure' of sorts?
 
C

Cream

Banned
BreezyLimbo said:
That is the question...if it was used on babies or children who were experiencing gender dysphoria....would it be unethical? Would it be a 'cure' of sorts?
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It would be EXTREMELY unethical. You also have no way of knowing if a child really has gender dysphoria that early.

It would be solely for people to do to themselves willingly
 
M

M0nochromatic

Member
Perhaps my reading comprehension is lacking, but what does 'male brain patterns' entail? To what degree does it change behavior and sexuality? The mice can't really be questioned.

BreezyLimbo said:
That is the question...if it was used on babies or children who were experiencing gender dysphoria....would it be unethical? Would it be a 'cure' of sorts?
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Shit... That's a fucked up possibility.
 
L

Lesath

Member
injurai said:
I don't think we can say that either.
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Agreed; they are female mice that exhibit certain male reproductive behaviors after you knock out or inhibit a certain gene. Labelling them as homosexual or transgender at this point would be a tad presumptuous.
 
M

metalslimer

Member
I mean we've been able to masculinize female rats for a while now. We've also been able to feminize male brains. At least, we've been able to get rats to show opposite gender sexual behavior. From a quick look, it seems the difference here was they actually changed DNA structure directly instead of with the steroid hormones you normally use

Also, don't worry people we are not even remotely close to being able to do this in humans.
 
B

BreezyLimbo

Banned
Cream said:
It would be EXTREMELY unethical. You also have no way of knowing if a child really has gender dysphoria that early.

It would be solely for people to do to themselves willingly
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Haven't there been stories of children who experience gender dysphoria? Doing some quick searches it seems to be rare, but I did see a link or two of children who've experience it.

Ganzlinger said:
But why we should do this? I mean, are we gonna do this to babies?
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Maybe parents will want to do it, designer babies and all that. I'm assuming that the scientists gave it to adult rats, so it could possibly be done to adults as well.
 
G

Ganzlinger

Member
BreezyLimbo said:
Maybe parents will want to do it, designer babies and all that. I'm assuming that the scientists gave it to adult rats, so it could possibly be done to adults as well.
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Actually, they done that in the first week of birth:

"The injections occurred after the first week of birth, the time when the window for brain sexual differentiation was thought to have been closed. "

But if it was someway possible to let adults choose it, I'd be totally okay.
 
K

kirblar

Member
BreezyLimbo said:
Haven't there been stories of children who experience gender dysphoria? Doing some quick searches it seems to be rare, but I did see a link or two of children who've experience it.
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They definitely do experience it. The issue is that you can get someone who's simply gender non-conforming as a false positive, and so doctors are very careful w/ using permanent solutions until they're sure of what's going on.
 
B

BreezyLimbo

Banned
Ganzlinger said:
Actually, they done that in the first week of birth:

"The injections occurred after the first week of birth, the time when the window for brain sexual differentiation was thought to have been closed. "

But if it was someway possible to let adults choose it, I'd be totally okay.
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Huh. Do it when the brain is the most malleable. That would be pretty unethical, if you're the sort of person who believe it should be the childs choice...I could see it being done as a 'guarantee' the sex matches the gender..

kirblar said:
They definitely do experience it. The issue is that you can get someone who's simply gender non-conforming as a false positive, and so doctors are very careful w/ using permanent solutions until they're sure of what's going on.
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I see. From the study with the rats however, it seems it's done before that, the first week of birth..so it'd be in the first month of the baby being born.
 
P

Platy

Member
BreezyLimbo said:
That is the question...if it was used on babies or children who were experiencing gender dysphoria....would it be unethical? Would it be a 'cure' of sorts?
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extremaly unethical.

cure would be the one I posted earlier, which is permanent hormone treatment
 
G

Ganzlinger

Member
BreezyLimbo said:
Huh. Do it when the brain is the most malleable. That would be pretty unethical, if you're the sort of person who believe it should be the childs choice...I could see it being done as a 'guarantee' the sex matches the gender..
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Hmm.. I actually didn't think about it as a 'guarantee' but thought you were talking about 'correcting' people or kids who already show signs of gender dysphoria.

Depending on the risks and how invasive is it I think it is a valid point the use of it to guarantee "sex matches gender".
 
T

The Llama

Member
I'm curious about the details of this. I tried to read the article but its a little dense heh. What are the "male behavioral patterns" that the female rats had? Like, did they just make the female rats become interested in males?

As for the "should we [hypothetically] use this on human children" thing, it's an interesting question. I guess not because ethics, but what if its scientifically proven that these drugs are what separate a "male" brain from a "female" brain, and that this kind of treatment would prevent gender dysphoria? Is it really that wrong for a parent to be able to prevent their child from experiencing that?
For the record I don't really know, and I'd lean towards saying it should be the child's choice.
 
B

BreezyLimbo

Banned
From reading through the article, they can control whether a male sex rat will behave like a female, or vice versa, which is governed by the brains preoptic area(Or POA), and even though it's rats, Humans have the same area.

So in theory, by doing this to babies you can guarantee the gender matches the sex. They don't mention any side effects in the rats(They mention the immune system, but that's tied to governing brain growth..), what this could mean is that gender dysphoria could be prevented before it even happens.

I guess the argument comes in form whether people who would be gender dysphoric should have the right to choose whether they want to be gender dysphoric or not...but the window of applying this injection is only open when the brain hasn't fully formed, right after birth...

..It's a tough question. I'm sure I've read here and there that gender dysphoric people wouldn't want to wish their situation on others(Correct me if I'm wrong), but..I can see how some would think it unethical.
 
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