Or so it seems more and more with every scientific study. So here's the scoop. Some Swedish science geeks trying to find out whether or not humans secrete and respond to pheromones--like almost every other creature that has ever lived and died on this planet does--made a rather interesting discovery along the way, a discovery that corroborates a study done in 1991 by one Dr. Simon LeVay. But first, a little history-cum-biology lesson.
Deep within the recesses of the brain, there resides a little gishy part called the hypothalamus. It is a primitive, autonomic part of the brain that controls, most notably, body temperature and the human sexual response among other things. Dr. LeVay was studying the differences between the hypothalumus of men and women when he came upon a rather fascinating find. He discovered that the hypothalumus in gay men and hetero-women were roughly the same size in one particular quadrant, and that both were smaller than the same hypothalamus section in hetero-men. Dr. LeVay's work pointed the first ever sign towards what all gay men already knew: that sexual orientation is a matter of genetics and biology, not just psychology. Now, fast-forward 14 years.
Swedish researchers studying human pheromones and pheromone response (trying to discover if the human body still used and produced pheromones to become and make other humans want to get their freak on, or if we had evolved away from it toward a visually-based system of horniness) discovered that perhaps we do still use nature's old chemistry formula for sexual attraction. They focused one part of their research on the, you guessed it, hypothalamus, as well as the smell response section of the brain.
Using a testosterone derivative produced naturally by men and an estrogen derivative produced naturally by women, they studied how subjects' brains reacted to the scents using a brain imaging technique that tracks which parts of the brain react to different stimuli. The estrogen compound generated a smell-center reaction in women, meaning that, yep, they smelled something. Yet in hetero-men, in addition to activating the smell-center, it also activated the hypothalumus; i.e., it made them randy, or at least made their hypothalumuses randy. Conversely, the results flipped when the testosterone derivative was introduced, with the hetero-male hypothalumus staying mute and uncaring, while the hetero-female hypothalumus went into hunka-hunka burnin' love overdrive.
Then the scientists became curious. Thinking back to Dr. LeVay's research, how would the hypothalumus in HoHoSaSas (Homosexual Homo Sapiens sapiens) react to the stimuli? Well, as it turns out, gay men, like their straight female counterparts, are turned on by man-sweat. Or at least their hypothalumuses (or is it hypothalumusi?) are turned on by the same testosterone derivative found in man-sweat as are women. But here's where things get tricky dicky.
The study doesn't confirm or refute exactly how these biological differences between straight and gay men and similarities between gay men and straight women occur in the first place. Whether it occurs in the womb as a result of maternal hormonal changes, or if it occurs as a result of a genetic predispositon interacting with environmental factors during puberty, when the hypothalmus first becomes active. It also doesn't give conclusive results concerning the lesbian hypothalamus' reactions as compared to hetero-men and women. But regardless of the causes and complexities, there seems to be pretty strong evidence that sexual orientation is hardwired into the human brain sometime during early development and that it is, shock of shocks, a natural occurrence.
We told you it wasn't a choice or a phase.
Deep within the recesses of the brain, there resides a little gishy part called the hypothalamus. It is a primitive, autonomic part of the brain that controls, most notably, body temperature and the human sexual response among other things. Dr. LeVay was studying the differences between the hypothalumus of men and women when he came upon a rather fascinating find. He discovered that the hypothalumus in gay men and hetero-women were roughly the same size in one particular quadrant, and that both were smaller than the same hypothalamus section in hetero-men. Dr. LeVay's work pointed the first ever sign towards what all gay men already knew: that sexual orientation is a matter of genetics and biology, not just psychology. Now, fast-forward 14 years.
Swedish researchers studying human pheromones and pheromone response (trying to discover if the human body still used and produced pheromones to become and make other humans want to get their freak on, or if we had evolved away from it toward a visually-based system of horniness) discovered that perhaps we do still use nature's old chemistry formula for sexual attraction. They focused one part of their research on the, you guessed it, hypothalamus, as well as the smell response section of the brain.
Using a testosterone derivative produced naturally by men and an estrogen derivative produced naturally by women, they studied how subjects' brains reacted to the scents using a brain imaging technique that tracks which parts of the brain react to different stimuli. The estrogen compound generated a smell-center reaction in women, meaning that, yep, they smelled something. Yet in hetero-men, in addition to activating the smell-center, it also activated the hypothalumus; i.e., it made them randy, or at least made their hypothalumuses randy. Conversely, the results flipped when the testosterone derivative was introduced, with the hetero-male hypothalumus staying mute and uncaring, while the hetero-female hypothalumus went into hunka-hunka burnin' love overdrive.
Then the scientists became curious. Thinking back to Dr. LeVay's research, how would the hypothalumus in HoHoSaSas (Homosexual Homo Sapiens sapiens) react to the stimuli? Well, as it turns out, gay men, like their straight female counterparts, are turned on by man-sweat. Or at least their hypothalumuses (or is it hypothalumusi?) are turned on by the same testosterone derivative found in man-sweat as are women. But here's where things get tricky dicky.
The study doesn't confirm or refute exactly how these biological differences between straight and gay men and similarities between gay men and straight women occur in the first place. Whether it occurs in the womb as a result of maternal hormonal changes, or if it occurs as a result of a genetic predispositon interacting with environmental factors during puberty, when the hypothalmus first becomes active. It also doesn't give conclusive results concerning the lesbian hypothalamus' reactions as compared to hetero-men and women. But regardless of the causes and complexities, there seems to be pretty strong evidence that sexual orientation is hardwired into the human brain sometime during early development and that it is, shock of shocks, a natural occurrence.
We told you it wasn't a choice or a phase.
Read more about it here: BBC Health News
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