If anybody has ever seen Tiger Wood’s old swing coach try to teach former NBA basketball player Charles Barkley, the man with the world’s worst golf swing, try to re-build his swing, I think they’d conclude, “Almost impossible!”

My husband insists I modify what I said about poor Charles. Actually, he’s right. Charles’ swing has improved and his function has as well. (We don’t know how permanent is the change.) It’s still a thing un-gawdly to look upon, but it IS improved. However, Charles is an athlete, and he practiced 8 hours a day, day after day, week after week, under the careful scrutiny of one of the foremost teachers in golf to get new neuropathways built!

Specific to this topic, what are you wondering?

re: gender atypicality
1. Say a young child finds stimulation (translated: enjoys) engaging in play that is normally associated with the play of the opposite sex. He/She is building neural pathways. Will his/her enjoyment of this gender atypical play have any impact on his/her neural connections that might later be related to concepts of gender? Self-perception? Will this t have any bearing on one’s sexual attractions?
To that last question, my gut and head answer “No” only because of my own experience, which, I realize, cannot be used to generalize, but we are always fighting our tendency to generalize from our own experiences, yet it is our own experience we use to help us ask questions.
I was quite the tomgirl in my play activities as a young kid. The dolls my mother and particularly my older sister (who looooved dolls herself) tried to get me to play with held no interest for me although the dollhouse was good, and the miniature pots and pans and even the baby buggy held interest, but not the dolls! Not the dolls! Not combing the doll’s hair, not their outfits, nothing about the dolls. Then again, I specifically remember they didn’t let me play with the dolls when I wanted–ha, they tried to force them on me and even today, when I tell the story to my sister she doesn’t understand that I resented the pushing, even though I was a very obedient kid. My older brother’s world of games outside, sports, running, playing , jumping and his patient nurturing of me (“here, let me show you how to hold this ball, how to hold this bat, this is how you put backspin on the basketball so that you can make a free throw”) was a much more inviting world to a child who liked physical activity. Then too, my neighborhood was filled with only boys, not girls, my age. If I wanted playmates, they had to be boys. The few girls were much older and much younger.
Of course, I was good at physical acitivities, blessed by good hand/ eye co-ordination, speed, and basic coordination. Kids like to participate in things at which they have early success.
Does the gender atypical boy find he has no interest in activities usually termed “boys’ activities” or does he find early shame in a lack of ability or lack of success at such play? Is he more sensitive to criticism than other kids and so retreats? After all, if we all quit something after some childhood taunts, we’d not have attempted much of anything, but some kids are more sensitve to criticism than others and some kids don’t have parents who say, “Get on back out there.”

Does the gender atypical kid simply not like gender-typical activities or does he/she discover natural talents in an area that is gender-atypical?

In my case, I can see that both nature (I was physically co-ordinated) and nurture (my brother vs. my sister and the neighborhood pool of playmates) led me to mostly boys’ activities. Of course, my sister aside, it was considered okay for girls to do that. A boy that stayed in the house cooking might have been viewed differently.
While I may have played with boys, I still had crushes on men at a very early age, I recall. I was in love with Superman, George Reeves, stared at his muscles, and dreamed of his picking me up to fly me away. I also had crushes on the Lone Ranger and Tonto and the Cisco Kid. (And, like every girl, I wanted a horse. LOL) When my brother and father watched boxing, I noticed the nice muscles of the boxers! I am always rather bemused when I read from some bloggers that they don’t really recall things sexual until a much later age. By 5/6, I certainly did.
It’s hard for us to put aside our own childhood reactions and try to step inside someone else’s head and experiences.
2. Do some kids find such social rewards (praise from peers, parents, inclusion in a group, etc.) when they do something that is gender-atypical that this accounts for their persistent interest in those areas ? Is that very important?A little important? Not at all important?
I certainly received praise from my brother for my athletic prowess, yet disappointment from my sister when I didn’t enjoy the dolls. In every other way, I had a great relationship with her and ordinarily would have wanted to please her. It was just more fun to do the other stuff.
3. Do gender atypical interests and involvement change socialization to the point that for some people self-perception becomes key to their sexual orientation? It didn’t in my case, but could it in some? Not in others?
Does self-perception at a young age affect brain organization?
4. Do some gender atypical kids, particularly boys ( who I think it’s fair to say, pay a higher social, thus psychological cost for their atypicality) find themselves unwelcomed into the world of other boys and so retreat to a world that is safer, more welcoming, more comforting to them, and if so, does that have anything at all to do with later sexual attractions?
5. Once neural pathways are established, how hard are they to “undo”? If anybody has ever seen Tiger Wood’s old swing coach try to teach former NBA basketball player Charles Barkley, the man with the world’s worst golf swing, try to re-build his swing, I think they’d conclude, “Almost impossible!”

Specific to this topic, what are you wondering?

Well, generally speaking, I can’t seem to separate this topic (gender atypicality or our perceptions about how we are treated by others) from any other topic that deals with human behavior, learning, and the brain.
More specifically, I was just responding to Evan’s point about how he wished these researchers had studied the amygdalae.
Here is something else I am wondering : if we could, just how early in one’s life (one month old? one year old? etc.) and how frequently would we have to image brains in order to pinpoint anything that might help us understand what comes first, the chicken or the egg? I am wondering if imaging alone would tell us much about cause and effect. I don’t know enough to know that answer and I was wondering if anything new had been discovered in answering this.
Also, I was thinking about this article: this from http://www.pnas.org/content/105/30/10273.full:

The first functional scanning paper by Kinnunen et al. (10), which described differences in the hypothalamus in relation to sexual orientation, received little scientific or public attention, although the results may have had clinical relevance. The hypothalamus of HoM, it turned out, was not as responsive to a classic antidepressant (fluoxetine) as that of HeM, which points to a difference in the activity of the serotonergic system.

So, it’s the old chicken and egg thing: if true that HoM didn’t react the same way to fluoxetine as HeM did, and if this does indicate a difference in the serotonin production or uptake, the question arises, “Are the neurons responsible for production of serotonin (or the synapses and dendrites responsible for transmission) not functioning the same in HoM and HeM and that explains the different behavior or are inutero or neonatal brain structures simply inherently different between the two and that is why neurotransmitter production or functioning is different?”
Structure produces function? Function modifies structure?
I’d also like to know if there has ever been a really good study that has measured at what age kids begin to exhibit gender atypicality. I know that in early toddlerhood, parents notice, of course, what toys their children like to play with, but I’d bet that some pediatricians who’ve practiced for decades might have knowledge, insights that would help.
For example, I’d like to know if these pediatricians notice anything in the movements, the motor skills of kids who turn out to be very gender atypical in childhood. I wouldn’t have the slightest idea how to do such a study, but I keep thinking about how just conversation among family physicians, just anecdotes told by one physician to another at medical conventions finally led researchers to look into why blood pressure medicine that was effective for most of their patients was not working for their African-American patients. Years passed before the Rx companies and the researchers had the feedback from doctors that these HBP medications weren’t doing the job for a subpopulation.
I simply mean that sometimes researchers might be ignoring people who might give them insights, in this case pediatricians who see a child very early in life and for the next few developing years.