The study suggests sexual preference is set in the womb The brains of gay men and women look like those found in heterosexual people of the opposite sex, research suggests. The Swedish study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal, compared the size of the brain's halves in 90 adults. Gay men and heterosexual women had halves of a similar size, while the right side was bigger in lesbian women and heterosexual men. A UK scientist said this was evidence sexual preference was set in the womb. Scientists have noticed for some time that homosexual people of both sexes have differences in certain cognitive abilities, suggesting there may be subtle differences in their brain structure. This is the first time, however, that scientists have used brain scanners to try to look for the source of those differences. A group of 90 healthy gay and heterosexual adults, men and women, were scanned by the Karolinska Institute scientists to measure the volume of both sides, or hemispheres, of their brain. When these results were collected, it was found that lesbian women and heterosexual men shared a particular "asymmetry" in their hemisphere size, while heterosexual women and gay men had no difference between the size of the different halves of their brain. In other words, structurally, at least, gay men were more like heterosexual women, and gay women more like heterosexual men. A further experiment found that in one particular area of the brain, the amygdala, there were other significant differences. In heterosexual men and lesbian women, there were more nerve "connections" in the right side of the amygdala, compared with the left. The reverse, with more neural connections in the left amygdala, was the case in homosexual men and heterosexual women. The Karolinska team said that these differences could not be mainly explained by "learned" effects, but needed another mechanism to set them, either before or after birth.
'Fight, flight or mate'
Dr Qazi Rahman, a lecturer in cognitive biology at Queen Mary, University of London, said that he believed that these brain differences were laid down early in foetal development. "As far as I'm concerned there is no argument any more - if you are gay, you are born gay," he said. The amygdala, he said, was important because of its role in "orientating", or directing, the rest of the brain in response to an emotional stimulus - be it during the "fight or flight" response, or the presence of a potential mate. "In other words, the brain network which determines what sexual orientation actually 'orients' towards is similar between gay men and straight women, and between lesbian women and straight men. "This makes sense given that gay men have a sexual preference which is like that of women in general, that is, preferring men, and vice versa for lesbian women."
****************************************
What about bisexuality???
__________________
"I am but too conscious of the fact that we are born in an age when only the dull are treated seriously, and I live in terror of not being misunderstood."
Oscar Wilde
I first read about a similar study about 4 years ago! What I read said that the correlation was between women and transwomen, men and transmen. Then it just sort of mentioned the sexuality thing.
Anyway I just don't like the way this works, it seems to scream "they can't help being sinners they were born that way"... when really it's the idea of sin itself that should be demolished.
I suppose it can help if "they were born that way" is the only line that'll convince people to deliver human rights.
But as per the way it was conducted and reported, I don't see why these scientists should be trusted more than people who describe how they FEEL. "I never exclusively fancied men til after puberty" a man might say... if they didn't fancy men before that and didn't define as gay, then they weren't, whereas here they seem to be told who they are and what they are called without being listened to for a moment.
Sexuality as far as i can see is fuzzy, everyone seems to define slightly differently, and feel differently. Trying to divide people into two groups within such a complexity and then provide correlations to a certain anatomical proportionality really seem to me like scraping the barrel.
I find the fact that these 90 people examined were all self defined as men or women, or defined as gay or straight, to mean that the study actively excluded bisexuals, the intersexed, queer people, trans people, and loads of straight people to make up the numbers on the gay team (it was a 50 gay : 40 straight split). Do these studies even apply to the majority of people, despite the correlations?
What if, say, those certain brain attributes make a person most likely to come out, or reconsider their sexuality, or to feel more comfortable with a term like "gay", that'd give similar results wouldn't it?
Maybe we should all get our brains measured to see if we're gay!
Absolutely. I wish they'd focus all that time and energy and equipment and money on something that actually means something. Like educating people to think in a more post-modern context!
Its just one study with just one conclusion, part of the patchwork of neurological research on sexuality. To suggest that its part of a moral or political agenda is to make a major assumption with little basis. Any good researcher simply presents evidence and is not biased to a particular view of sexuality. Presumably in this case labels like 'heterosexual' and 'gay' were self-ascribed by the participants rather than crudely assigned by the researchers. I agree that such rigid labels are often harmful but for the purposes of the study some boundaries had to be drawn, if a little arbitrary.
The study does NOT argue that people are born with a particular sexuality. The size and shape of various areas of the brain vary throughout a person's lifetime according to environmental effects. So it could be that sexuality causes a 'gay brain' just as much as brain structure causes sexuality. either way, its not saying anything about causation or 'gay genes' as far as I can tell.
Its not trying to make any grand conclusions about sexuality or exclude anyone, its just demonstrating the differences in brain structure between people who call themselves gay and straight. The conclusions that can be drawn from this can be made to fit a variety of political agendas, but from what I've read the researchers seem politically neutral to me or at least fairly sensitive, given the volatile subject matter.
yep I agree with sally. The metro has combined the results of the study with the opinion of Dr Qazi Rahman (the two being completely unrelated)
The biniaries 'framing' the study were in a sense arbtary yes, but a trend was found within them, LITERALLY that was it.
and then the metro decided to form it's own opinions and present them to the always knowing public.
Also, why is it bad that a study creates more questions than it answers? i can't think of a single scientific discovery that didn't create hundreds of questions in it's wake. (think about evolution)
The only agenda of the scientific community is knowledge, and anything else just isn't scientific, and therefore cannot be criticised as though it is.
If you are criticising the metro, then i agree they are ****5......
finally i'm sorry, but how on earth do you know if this study is useful or not, surely anything endeavour to understand more about the brain cannot be dismissed as not useful.
Okay, but I also think it's a bit sweeping to believe the researchers behind this were good - unless you have a basis for that, of course. But, in general, I don't think it's reasonable to assume that all scientists *are* neutral, or that a scientist wouldn't ever interpret results of a study through the filter of their own views or prejudices. Think of phrenology - some scientists would have had people believe that the physiological differences between the skulls of different races was a reflection of their criminal leanings. Science may generally strive for the "truth", but it is a field made up of individuals, not a black and white doctrine, and therefore I think it's reasonable to put the logic of its contributors up to sociological scrutiny.
some 'scientists' will also have you believe that noah's ark was real.
personal interpretation of the results of a study are not infact scientific. real scientists will only go so far as to use the results of a study to hypothesise and carry out subscequent studies. full stop.
noone would ever write a review of a book they haven't read.
i do not think that you have any right to criticise this, or any study unless you have researched and looked at the results for yourself, instead of reading it second hand in the metro and recycling a second hand opinion
i don't know what your definition of 'good' is, but all that the study found was that there were CERTAIN similarities between some heterosexual women and homosexual men and vice versa.
scientists can have an agenda, but that is never scientific, and can only be called distortion, as we have seen demonstrated by the metro.
there is massive difference between the results of one study that the papers happened to leap upon, and the conclusions that journalists and the general public have made about it without any proper research.
Anyway, it wasn't just in the Metro. I read about it in the Guardian, and it pretty much just said they'd found a link between brain structure and which gender you prefer. But it didn't say which part of the brain it was, how it linked to gender identity, or whether they studied the brains of bisexual, pansexual, asexual and trans people, which I doubt they did. But neither was there any implication that the scientists had any particular agenda in doing this research, and I trust the Guardian, at least, to have mentioned it if there were one.
It's really not conclusive, it's more just another little step towards a greater understanding of what causes sexual preference in general. It can be misreported as cast-iron Proof of something, but that's not it at all.
Forgive me lol, i think I think i read a misquote somewhere saying that the ~"this couldn't happen any other way but in the womb"~ or something to that affect from someone actually in the study.
However, This is from the independant:
"The observations cannot be easily attributed to perception or behaviour," the researchers from Sweden's Karolinska Institute wrote. "Whether they may relate to processes laid down during the fetal or postnatal development is an open question."
scary thing is chris, i could actually see you doing that
__________________
Nic // LGBT Society Events Officer 05/06 // LGBT Assembly Chair 05/06 - NUS LGBT Society of the year 2006(winners) //
LUU honarary life member - Awarded 2006 // LGBT Assembly Mentor 2006 -Onwards.
Contact me at nicturner_85@hotmail.com
