This week a guest speaker from UCSD, Dr. Kauffman, came in and gave a lecture on male and female brain structures. The professor explained his research he does on brains and neurobiology. Part of his study includes making slices of mouse brains 20 times smaller than a piece of paper and looking at the structure of them and how they work similar to humans.
He told us the hypothalamus is responsible for the control of temperature, feeding, sleeping, drinking, body weight and reproduction. The AVPV specifically is a sub region that controls the secretion of the reproductive hormones. These hormones spike in males, and are steady in females. One fact he mentioned about hormones really caught my attention. He found that if the testosterone surge in men was blocked from happening, they had a higher kisspeptin levels, similar to a female's. This would conclude that even though the mouse had male genitals, the brain would work like a females. I couldn’t help but think about my transgender sister. If what Dr Kauffman says is true, then my sister, who has male genitalia, definitely has a different brain structure and higher kisspeptin levels. I now wonder if something affected my sister during a specific time in her development that may have blocked some hormones from developing a male brain, and where it took place. This will help me in my teen brain health proposal too.
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ProjectTeen Brain Health Archives
April 2017
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