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 Lindstr๖m, 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."
Comments
Posted by: lindsey | September 30, 2005 04:11 PM
Posted by: jjxyz | October 1, 2005 05:35 AM