this post was submitted on 27 Feb 2024
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This article describes a new study using AI to identify sex differences in the brain with over 90% accuracy.

Key findings:

  • An AI model successfully distinguished between male and female brains based on scans, suggesting inherent sex-based brain variations.
  • The model focused on specific brain networks like the default mode, striatum, and limbic networks, potentially linked to cognitive functions and behaviors.
  • These findings could lead to personalized medicine approaches by considering sex differences in developing treatments for brain disorders.

Additional points:

  • The study may help settle a long-standing debate about the existence of reliable sex differences in the brain.
  • Previous research failed to find consistent brain indicators of sex.
  • Researchers emphasize that the study doesn't explain the cause of these differences.
  • The research team plans to make the AI model publicly available for further research on brain-behavior connections.

Overall, the study highlights the potential of AI in uncovering previously undetectable brain differences with potential implications for personalized medicine.

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 6 months ago (2 children)

I'm asking genuinely: is this "AI" or is this "ML," because the latter terms appears more appropriate to me.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago

Ai has begun to be used interchangeably with all kinds of automation. Not that I agree with it, but it's the current golden child.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Machine learning has been a subset of artificial inteligence research for decades (like 4 at least).

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

From a technical perspective yeah, but from a colloquial manner AI and ML have been used interchangeably for years. An issue only made worse by AI now frequently being used to describe GenAI which, while ML, behaves in a manner where it's somewhat misleading to use AI/ML/Gen AI interchangeably.

[–] [email protected] 42 points 6 months ago (3 children)

Interesting that it's only 90% accurate but looking at pictures of iris scans it's 98.88% accurate while an ophthalmologist can tell no difference between the scans from males and females.

Source

[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 months ago

While the iris study is interesting, looking at their dataset the pictures seem to include the area around the eye a little bit, including eye lashes, so after a cursory glance it seems odd that they even titled it as iris. However I didn’t read the full thing so it cold be that they cropped it somewhere. Although they are using large convolutions so a lot of detail is lost.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 6 months ago (1 children)

There are several reasons why the ability to determine gender from iris images is an interesting and potentially useful problem (3). One possible use arises in searching in an authorization database for a match. If the gender of a sample can be determined, it can be used to order the search reduce the average search time. Another possible use arises in social settings, where it may be useful to screen entry to an area based on gender but without recording identity (3). Gender classification is also important for collecting demographic information, for marketing research and for real-time electronic marketing. Yet another possible use is in high-security scenarios, where there may be value in knowing the gender of people who attempt entry but are not recognized as authorized persons.

So useful for marketing, and harassing my trans homies. Fuck that shit!

From a biological standpoint it is still quite fascinating

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

I mean the paper you quoted keeps saying "gender" ...Is it actually for affirming trans folks? Big if true but I obviously didn't read the source material.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

I did get curious and try to dig up if those irises were classified by gender identity or agab, and neither the paper quoted nor the paper they cited as the source clarify on that point. They do only use the word gender, though, never sex.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 6 months ago (2 children)

How can they say the differences are inherent? Wouldn’t you have to control for someone’s entire socialization to say that?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Clarify why that would be necessary, I'm not following your argument well.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

You can't point to a difference and say it's (directly) caused by chromosomes or the SRY gene or hormones, whatever. Brain differences increase with age, suggesting that they may be more to do with socialisation than genetics. Does this evidence prove that women should be treated differently or is it evidence that women are, in fact, treated differently?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago

The article touches on your question. It says that it's too earlier to know if the differences are caused by hormones, chromosomes, or socialization. No point in speculating.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 6 months ago (1 children)

They can’t rule out the potential explanation that being raised male changes your brain in a different way than being raised female without having subjects that were raised differently than their birth sex. You would have to control for that variable in order to rule it out.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Many thanks. Obviously, getting brain scans of infants is... difficult, so I wonder if one could proxy that. Maybe feed it brain scans from cultures with significant gender role differences and see if any performance differences are significant?

I'd also be very curious how it sorted transgender individuals. I remember reading something years ago about transgender brains being structured like the sex with which they identify, but that was a long time ago and my critical reading skills have come a long way since then.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

Last I read regarding trans brains: it's a confusing mishmash and unclear if brains are even as sexed as they seem outside of just size. If they are though, it seems like probably trans brains are at least somewhere in between? More research definitely appreciated.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago

The study may help settle a long-standing debate about the existence of reliable sex differences in the brain.

How many studies on these lines must appear before this "debate" is overcome? It is even a truism! That we are a tabula rasa without sexual dimorphism is as absurd as biological determinism.

[–] [email protected] 36 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

I don't doubt that there are inherent differences between the brains of most men and women, but "we can measure these differences" and "these differences are inherent" are two different claims. I don't really get what the article is trying to get at by first claiming the latter and then walking back to the former.

~~btw can someone post the full PDF I can't access it via sci-hub yet~~


Edit: Also a tangential nitpick, but looking at their code I can tell that they're psychiatrists/neuroscientists first and programmers second lol

"CNN Block 1" comment used twice?

They skip layer 5? (Why even keep it in there??)

A linear layer with 2 outputs??? And then they do "_, predicted = torch.max(outputs.data, 1)" in the training script???? JUST USE 1 OUTPUT WITH A SIGMOID I'M BEGGING YOU

And there's a lot going on in the "utilityFunctions.py" file lol

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Good God that utility file.

For the record, I've earned some serious cash essentially chasing around data scientists and whipping their code into production readiness and deployability. So, carry on I guess. I've literally seen code like this that a company relies on, that runs one one dudes laptop (but he's a PhD and the brainz of the product! Lol)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

More like a proof of concept, since they didn't significantly improve upon the accuracy of their predictions compared to prior models.

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