Anne-Lise Godding
Clinical Academic Consultant in Paediatrics and Adolescent Health at London North West University Healthcare NHS Trust; and Honorary Senior Clinical Lecturer at Imperial College London with a research background in adolescent cognitive neuroscience and neuroimaging
This study reports relatively weak brain functional connectivity associations with parent-reported ‘gender’ over and above sex assigned at birth. It’s crucial when interpreting this study to contextualise that this ‘gender’ measure focuses mainly on how much parents report their children engaged in stereotypical ‘gendered’ play. Parents answered questions including about how much their child plays with “girl-type dolls such as ‘Barbie’”, “boy-type dolls such as ‘GI-Joe’”, “how much they play sports with girls (but not boys)” and “with boys (but not girls)”, and how much they “imitate male and female TV and movie characters”.
This measure of gender doesn’t capture the broader concept of gender identity which incorporates an individual’s own feelings and perceptions of their identity.
In the absence of clear hypotheses or accounting for confounders, the findings of the study are of limited impact and should be interpreted with caution. Later Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development project (ABCD) study waves and other cohort studies may help to improve understanding of this complex topic.