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Updated: Dec 3, 2025

Brain Imaging Investigation of the Neural Correlates of Emotional Autobiographical Recollection
Published on: August 26, 2011
Gender identity better than sex explains individual differences in episodic and semantic components of
Laurie Compère1, Sylvain Charron2, Thierry Gallarda3
1Université de Paris, MC(2)Lab, F-92100 Boulogne-Billancourt, Ile de France, France; Department of Psychiatry, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, United States.
Abstract:
Advances in the literature of sex-related differences in autobiographical memory increasingly tend to highlight the importance of psychosocial factors such as gender identity, which may explain these differences better than sex as a biological factor. To date, however, none of these behavioral studies have investigated this hypothesis using neuroimaging. The purpose of this fMRI study is to examine for the first time sex and gender identity-related differences in episodic and semantic autobiographical memory in healthy participants (M=19, W=18). No sex-related differences were found; however, sex-related effects of masculine and feminine gender identity were identified in men and women independently. These results confirm the hypothesis that differences in episodic and semantic autobiographical memory are best explained by gender but are an interaction between biological sex and gender identity and extend these findings to the field of neuroimaging. We discuss the importance of hormonal factors to be taken into consideration in the future.
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