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Elevated rates of autism in transgender and gender-diverse individuals

nature.com

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Re: Elevated rates of autism in transgender and gender-diverse individuals

#3

Post by echurilov » 

  The transgender and gender-diverse vs. cisgender effect sizes are equivalent to or larger than the autism vs. non-autism effect sizes and the cisgender male vs. cisgender female effect sizes in non-autistic individuals.
if i understand that right, whether you're trans is a better indicator of whether you have autistic traits than a) your assigned sex or b) whether you are diagnosed with autism

Re: Elevated rates of autism in transgender and gender-diverse individuals

#4

Post by SubiculumCode »

This is my 2020 paper in a similar vein.

We found attenuated sex differences in amygdala resting-state connectivity between boys and girls with autism, but robust sex differences in amygdala connectivity in typically developing boys and girls. This pattern was observed using both univariate and multivariate analytical approaches, consistent with gender incoherence hypothesis, which stands in contrast with extreme male brain theory. [addendum: We are examining other networks now, and this pattern is found in other prominent brain networks, but not all.]

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S24519...

Re: Elevated rates of autism in transgender and gender-diverse individuals

#6

Post by SubiculumCode »

contravariant wrote: post #5

I'm gonna be honest, using kernel density estimates on discrete data is almost bad enough to make me discount the result outright. Almost.

"In all five datasets, we investigated if rates of autism diagnosis significantly differed by gender by first conducting χ2 tests (Model 1, unadjusted), and then by conducting logistic regressions adjusted for age and educational attainment as covariates (Model 2, adjusted)."

It appears the kernel density estimates is being used as a display of the data, not the actual method of statistical analysis, or perhaps I missed something.

Re: Elevated rates of autism in transgender and gender-diverse individuals

#7

Post by Pfhreak »

Hanging out in trans circles (as a non-binary person myself), this seems commonly known within the community. Interesting to see research done here, but I'd be careful about over generalizing (e.g. "All trans people are neurodiverse").

Edit: Also, happy to answer questions about being non-binary (specifically, gender fluid) if folks have good faith questions.

Re: Elevated rates of autism in transgender and gender-diverse individuals

#9

Post by apsec112 »

moultano wrote: post #8

Are there leading candidate hypotheses for the cause of autism? Do we know things like heritability, correlation with environmental pollutants, anything?

The short answer is that nobody really knows, although it probably has some genetic component. Wikipedia has a long article covering the different hypotheses: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_autism

Re: Elevated rates of autism in transgender and gender-diverse individuals

#10

Post by alicemaz »

SubiculumCode wrote: post #4

This is my 2020 paper in a similar vein. We found attenuated sex differences in amygdala resting-state connectivity between boys and girls with autism, but robust sex differences in amygdala connectivity in typically developing boys and girls. This pattern was observed using both univariate and multivariate analytical approaches, consistent with gender incoherence hypothesis, which stands in contrast with extreme mal…

oh interesting. I've had a pet theory for awhile now re: trans/autism comorbidity that they're better thought of as symptoms (among others! op's link notes higher incidence of every surveyed mental disorder) of some underlying brain abnormality, rather than being tangled up in some causal relationship with each other. had not heard of gender incoherence theory before
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