Brain response to putative pheromones in homosexual men
» Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual
Hey, what about me? I like guys, girls, transvestites, transsexuals. It is good when they stink, wonderful when they smell sweet. What does that say about my pheromone receptors?
Science marches on and may yet trip on its shoelaces.
The nose plays a major role in determining if a person is attracted to men or women, scientists suggest today.
Nose 'dictates sexual orientation'
Don't you love it when the study population is the size of a cocktail parry. 82 people! I know research budgets are tight. Maybe they were when they did their research.
The Monell team asked a group of 82 straight and gay men and women to sniff underam sweat collected from 24 donors of different gender and sexual orientation.
The preferences of gay men were strikingly different from those of heterosexual men and women, and lesbian women.
[Gay men smell different? Compare a queer truck driver to a gay perfume salesman. - REL]Gay men preferred the odours of other gay men, and heterosexual women.
Humans are highly skilled at sniffing out suitable sexual partners, research has found.
"We found that homosexual men react the same way as women do to the (testosterone derivative) androstadien pheromone: they get aroused," said Per Lindström, a physician at the neuroscience department at the Karolinska University Hospital and the co-author of a new study on the subject.
Gay men "attracted by same odours as women"
The scientists exposed heterosexual men and women and homosexual men to chemicals found in male and female sex hormones. One chemical is a testosterone derivative produced in men's sweat. The other chemical is an estrogen-like compound in women's urine.
These chemicals have long been suspected of being pheromones, molecules emitted by one individual that evoke some behavior in another of the same species. Pheromones trigger basic responses, such as sexual attraction, in many animals.
But scientists have long debated if humans respond to pheromones. The new study suggests that pheromones indeed play a part in making humans sexually attractive to one another.
"Sexy" Smells Different for Gay, Straight Men, Study Says
More soberly:
"The big question is not where homosexuality comes from, but where does sexuality come from," said Dr. Dean Hamer, a geneticist at the National Institutes of Health.
The different pattern of activity that Dr. Savic sees in the brains of gay men could be either a cause of their sexual orientation or an effect of it. If sexual orientation has a genetic cause, or is influenced by hormones in the womb or at puberty, then the neurons in the hypothalamus could wire themselves up in a way that permanently shapes which sex a person is attracted to.
Alternatively, Dr. Savic's finding could be just a consequence of straight and gay men's using their brain in different ways.
"We cannot tell if the different pattern is cause or effect," Dr. Savic said. "The study does not give any answer to these crucial questions."
For Gay Men, an Attraction to a Different Kind of Scent
Comments
i think that this area should not be researched at this present time. it is an area that i dont think society needs to know anything about at this time. if they do find a biological cause for why people are gay then they will only use it to find a drug to turn people streight or if a drug to stop unborn children developing in a gay way and i think that this will be doing future generations an injustice. i believe gay people are part of the natural order of nature and that one day in the distant future children will be sat in history lessons learning and laughting about the times gone by when it was seen by many as unatural to be gay.
Posted by: lindsey | September 30, 2005 4:11 PM
I have done alot of reading on this subject and there is a lot of experimantal evidence that suggest that gay males brains are wired similarly to th female brain. And that a gay male loves a man the way a woman does. Apparently ther is a tiny gland in the female brain that does not normally exist in the normal male brain tht squeezes out a specific hormone inthe blood o females. The studies reveal that the gay men have this same gland that women do but most straite men dont.————- This isa documented study— no bs——ps - im a bisexual male myself - so th topic intrigues me aswell. j
Posted by: jjxyz | October 1, 2005 5:35 AM