Abstract
BackgroundSome transgender people desire a transition through gender-affirming hormone treatment (GAHT). To date, it is unknown how GAHT changes emotion perception in transgender people. MethodsThirty transgender men (TM), 30 cisgender men (CM), and 35 cisgender women (CW) underwent 3 Tesla functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while passively viewing emotional faces (happy, angry, surprised faces) at two timepoints (T0 and T1). At T0 all participants were hormone-naïve, while TM immediately commenced testosterone supplementation at T0. The second scanning session (T1) occurred after 6–10 months of GAHT in TM. All 3 groups completed both T0 and T1 ResultsGAHT in TM shifted the neural profile whilst processing emotions from a sex-assigned at birth pattern at T0 (similar to CW) to a consistent with gender identity pattern at T1 (similar to CM). Overall, the brain patterns stayed the same for the cis people at T0 and T1. ConclusionsThese findings document the impact of hormone treatment, and testosterone supplementation specifically, on emotion perception in TM.
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