I mean sure, yeah, but...<p><a href="https://hn.algolia.com/?query=changes%20brain&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story" rel="nofollow">https://hn.algolia.com/?query=changes%20brain&sort=byPopular...</a><p>so does meditation, walking in nature, inactivity, porn, drugs, focus, menstruation, Alzheimer's, cellphones, the iInternet, The Knowledge, programming, football...<p>changing it's structure is how the brain reacts to basically any regular stimulus. Thats how it works.
I have MtF friend. We knew each other when we still we're both officially men. We became roommates for a year when she was mid transition.<p>I thought that would be cool, because I might understand women better now that I had somebody who had seen the both perspectives. How it is to be a man and how it is to be a woman.<p>I was wrong. She had never understood anything about manhood. Now she didn't even pretend anymore. I think there are some real and big differences between the sexes, but I still don't have good grasp about them.
I had a (male) colleague once argue with me that men and women had no differences in mentality due to testosterone. The desire to believe in equality is weird sometimes.<p>To be clear, I don't think there is any difference in generic mental abilities due to gender / sex, but it seems clear that brains would be affected by hormonal differences - for instance I have a thyroid deficiency, and I can really feel it when I'm low.
It's unfortunate that changes in the brain is all they studied. If you have 18 people who are undergoing this transition, it would be useful to document any other changes and note them as candidates for further study.<p>For example, many people will remark on an increased sex drive (not a surprise considering the testosterone), but the way people actually think about and treat the opposite gender seems to change as well. It would suggest that testosterone has a part to play in the development of gendered social structures. But who knows?
Beautiful example of politics driving research. They only studied something they knew was a disadvantage for males, while the first thing everybody is curious about is how the IQ changed, if it changed: <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/higher/dr-paul-irwing-there-are-twice-as-many-men-as-women-with-an-iq-of-120-plus-426321.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/higher/dr-paul-i...</a>