Please explain to me how a chemical imbalance causes someone who is looking at another with certain physical characteristics to become sexually attracted to them? Are you saying this imbalance causes homosexual males to confuse their gender? If so, I ask again, why are they not repeating these EXACT SAME STUDIES on women? (Human women, not monkeys)
My contention is that any sexual behavior is in one's head - not the hypothalamus, but the cognitive, sensory, and memory portions. I don't believe there is a gene that emits some kind of cosmic rays that causes a sexual attraction to someone with certain physical characteristics. That defies logic.
All physiological research begins with animal studies. you can not in any ethical manner do invasive or alteration studies on human beings. Just to do post-mortem studies requires a mountain of regulatory work and to do live human studies requires wading through endless Federal regulations that eliminate most studies from the financial strain. Thus animal models are valuable research and are amazingly informative. Believe it or not - almost every neurological system, receptor mechanisms, control/feedback systems in the human body were determined from animal studies. The drugs we use know were developed from this type of research - the surgical techniques, the treatment modalities, the physiological paradigms that give rise to modern medicine are all from animal studies. They can't be discounted.
Yes, relationships are more complicated than "basest animal instincts" but are all based upon those instincts and the neural pathways that produce those behaviors. The brain is not a magic box that produces complex behavior from nothing - all must be laid down in a pathway - a sequence of interneural connections.
Please explain to me how a chemical imbalance causes someone who is looking at another with certain physical characteristics to become sexually attracted to them?
When you see someone with certain characteristics, there are chemical changes, neurotransmitters, hormones, proto-oncogene expressions, etc., that can alter your behavior towards them. When a woman sees her baby for the first time, there is a massive oxytocin release. Serotonergic and dopaminergic pathways alter in action and form new connections. The woman becomes bonded to that baby and feels an onrush of maternal, nurturing, and love feelings. If the serotonin pathways are defective, such as can occur in postpartum depression, this onrush of emotions is not a positive one but one of anger and rejection to the baby. By the way, the structural geometry of an infants face activates similar pathways which is part of the the "aww, how cute" nurturing reaction initiated in most people. The theory being that this is a protective mechanism for groups to care for all young in the group and not just their own.
If so, I ask again, why are they not repeating these EXACT SAME STUDIES on women? (Human women, not monkeys)
The original study was a simple anatomical comparison. It showed that a difference in neuronal density, size, and connectivity produces a different sexual behavior. The next step is determine why and what other factors are involved. Thus studies on men and women have been performed involving neurotransmitter levels, receptor binding, second messenger signaling, proto-oncogene expression, and more. These are more in depth and get to the microbiological mechanisms behind behaviors.
As mentioned above, human studies are very limited - by ethics (do you want everyone to be a lab rat?, by regulations, by finance, and by limited resources. Again, animal models are much more efficient.
My contention is that any sexual behavior is in one's head - not the hypothalamus, but the cognitive, sensory, and memory portions. I don't believe there is a gene that emits some kind of cosmic rays that causes a sexual attraction to someone with certain physical characteristics. That defies logic.
Like I said before, the brain is not a magic box. All behaviors have pathways in the brain that initiate and control them - anger, fear, happiness, etc. You can not have a thought or an emotion without neurons interacting.The limbic system of the brain, especially the hypothalamus, is deeply involved in emotional states and sexual behavior. Defects in this area has been shown to be responsible for depression, PMS, and altered sexual activity.
There is no magic gene either. No one gene codes for the brain. No gene emits "cosmic rays" to cause sexual attraction. That requires the interplay of neurons within neural systems. To believe that the personality operates independently of brain function is the illogical stance.