Posted on 05/09/2005 4:59:01 PM PDT by Scenic Sounds
WASHINGTON -- Scientists trying to sniff out biological differences between gay and straight men have found new evidence - in scent.
It turns out that sniffing a chemical from testosterone, the male sex hormone, causes a response in the sexual area of gay men's brains, just as it does in the brains of straight women, but not in the brains of straight men.
"It is one more piece of evidence ... that is showing that sexual orientation is not all learned," said Sandra Witelson, an expert on brain anatomy and sexual orientation at the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada.
Witelson, who was not part of the research team that conducted the study, said the findings show a biological involvement in sexual orientation.
The study, published in Tuesday's issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was done by researchers at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden.
They exposed heterosexual men and women and homosexual men to chemicals derived from male and female sex hormones.
These chemicals are thought to be pheromones -- molecules known to trigger responses such as defense and sex in many animals.
Whether humans respond to pheromones has been debated, although in 2000 American researchers reported finding a gene that they believe directs a human pheromone receptor in the nose.
The Swedish study was one of a series looking at whether parts of the brain involved in reproduction differ in response to odors and pheromones, lead researcher Ivanka Savic said.
The brains of different groups responded similarly to ordinary odors such as lavender, but differed in their response to the chemicals thought to be pheromones, Savic said.
The Swedish researchers divided 36 subjects into three groups -- heterosexual men, heterosexual women and homosexual men. They studied the brain response to sniffing the chemicals, using PET scans. All the subjects were healthy, unmedicated, right-handed and HIV negative.
When they sniffed smells like cedar or lavender, all of the subjects' brains reacted only in the olfactory region that handles smells.
But when confronted by a chemical from testosterone, the male hormone, portions of the brains active in sexual activity were activated in straight women and in gay men, but not in straight men, the researchers found.
The response in gay men and straight women was concentrated in the hypothalamus with a maximum in the preoptic area that is active in hormonal and sensory responses necessary for sexual behavior, the researchers said.
And when estrogen, the female hormone was used, there was only a response in the olfactory portion of the brains of straight women. Homosexual men had their primary response also in the olfactory area, with a very small reaction in the hypothalamus, while heterosexual men responded strongly in the reproductive region of the brain.
Savic said the group is also doing a study involving homosexual women but those results are not yet complete.
In a separate study looking at people's response to the body odors of others, researchers in Philadelphia found sharp differences between gay and straight men and women.
"Our findings support the contention that gender preference has a biological component that is reflected in both the production of different body odors and in the perception of and response to body odors," said neuroscientist Charles Wysocki, who led the study.
In particular, he said, finding differences in body odors between gay and straight individuals indicates a physical difference.
It's hard to see how a simple choice to be gay or lesbian would influence the production of body odor, he said.
Wysocki's team at the Monell Chemical Senses Center studied the response of 82 heterosexual and homosexual men and heterosexual and homosexual women to the odors of underarm sweat collected from 24 donors of varied gender and sexual orientation.
They found that gay men differed from heterosexual men and women and from lesbian women, both in terms of which body odors gay men preferred and how their own body odors were regarded by the other groups.
Gay men preferred odors from gay men, while odors from gay men were the least preferred by heterosexual men and women and by lesbian women in the study. Their findings, released Monday, are to be published in the journal Psychological Science in September.
The Swedish research was funded by the Swedish Medical Research Council, the Karolinska Institute and the Magnus Bergvall Foundation. Wysocki's research was supported by the Monell Center.
I noted it was very complex . . .
because of learning, tastes, conscious choices etc.
Holding all other things equal, I still say, recent research indicates that pheremones can be powerful contributors toward attraction related behaviors.
The article talked about some solid research. The smells triggered sexual responses--at least at the brain level and probably somewhat at the genital level.
The smells DID THAT. Smells CAN DO THAT.
The smell triggers can be ignored, amplified, distracted from, played various games with etc. But this research says that the smells trigger clear physiological brain responses in the brain area that triggers/facilitates sexual responses. That's simply true.
Smells are famous for triggering intense memories associated with those smells. That is hypothesized to be true because the nose has such a direct route to some very key brain centers. That's likely one reason that such smells as this research discusses can be so powerful
WITH CERTAIN TYPES OF PEOPLE AND PARTICULARLY SO IN CERTAIN CONTEXTS WITH CERTAIN OTHER TYPES OF PEOPLE OR THE SAME TYPES OF PEOPLE.
I don't understand what's so difficult to accept about that.
It's not quite the same thing as saying that one whiff of a homosexual stud's T-shirt and all the gays on the street are going to walk immediately across racing traffic and start humping on the sidewalk. But it's also not quite the same thing as saying that smells have no impact.
You'd do well to ask Scripter and/or EdReform about that text. It was likely a fabrication by pro-homosexual text book writers or faux researchers. I have never, ever heard or read that, and if it was really true, it would be blasted all over the place, since homosexual pushers are searching devotedly for anything that proves their points.
Perhaps not now, but if you came from a really screwed up family, with a father who deserted you, then you were molested/seduced as a child or adolescent by an older man you admired and looked up to, who knows?
Last time a distinction in brain chemistry was found and hypothesized as a basis for homosexuality, it was also found that the brain chemistry of lab rats that had been subjected to stress and drugs showed the same differences. So I guess this latest finding is pretty important, since things like stress and substance abuse are so unheard of in the gay community, right?
who knows is the correct answer. Many come from upstanding Christian families so I don't know.
There are many things that can cause a person to become attracted to the same sex; even being attracted but not acting on the attraction can weaken that attraction.
The important point is that the fact that there are tens of thousands of former homosexuals proves that it is not inborn, and certainly not immutable.
Even if some people have more of a tendency to be attracted to members of the same sex (which point is debatable at best), it is a fact that people, if they want, have a good chance of being healed from it.
Sorry, too much research on biological basis for behavior suggests we do indeed have inborn propensities. Identical twins reared apart go into the same or similar lines of work far more often than do adoptive siblings raised together from birth. In case you hadn't notice, the brain is physical.
We all know that gross deformities of the brain (Downs syndrome, for example) have a genetic basis. Why are you fighting the obvious? Do you really buy the argument that inborn = morally right?
You are raising strawman arguments.
Yes, identical twins are similar in many ways, but not in the tendency to go gay.
Some things like Downs have a genetic cause, but some infections do genetic damage, so your analogy to Downs is not complete. You'd have to show that the genetic damage shows up only at the same rate as other bad mutations (which gay does not), or that being gay provides some benefit (like sickle-cell/malaria), which hasn't been found.
My reference is "Perspectives in Biology and Medicine", 43,3, Spring 2001, pg 406, the article is "Infectious Causation of Disease: An Evolutionary Perspective", by Cochran, Ewald and Cochran.
This article notes that the evolutionary fitness load and relatively high incidence matches that of an infectious cause, not a hereditary cause. It's not proof of an infectious cause, but it is sufficient evidence to justify further research.
Did you read the second paragraph? Do you know the difference between temptation and sin? Do you know the difference between the conditions when Adam sinned only through his own volition, and conditions now when we have bad examples of other sinners, and are born without the communion of the Holy Spirit which Adam received when God breathed upon him?
Exactly what I was thinking.
For Gays, only the left side of the brain is affected, thus the Leftist thought pattern.
This is an effort of the homosexual advocates to declare everyone with a sense of smell is a homoseuxal.
(note: no sarcasm)
I believe (just as every qualifier in the article believes), genes dictate physical properties. The rest is the result of thought patterns ... taught and learned ... (because one believes a particular way or view is correct, one follows the paths that way or view directs.)
and are at pains to argue against the existence of inborn propensities toward particular behaviors (particularly sins).
Now, do you really, really believe that the normal genetic component of a heterosexual male human being does not produce a powerful temptation to commit fornication, and even fornication with women just past puberty? Yes, we sin by our own choice, just as Adam did, but it's a lot harder for us to choose rightly out here in 'this world' rather than in Paradise.
It's the wrong fight. Traditional morality is given us to transcend the temptations we are heir to, and grace to attain again the likeness which had fallen of old. Arguing that besetting temptations cannot be inborn goes against both the plain words of Scripture and increasingly against the evidence of science.
Fight for the morality given us in the Scriptures, not against science.
Homosexuality is a choice. My message to gay people. Look in the mirror and deny your existance because that is exactly what you are doing, living a lie.
tabula rasa was for intelligence, hormones out of sync should get treated as a disorder.
Exactly. I was thinking the same thing.
And what training etc. leads you to the conclusion that it's quack science?
It's not quack science nor propaganda EXCEPT for the interpretation the idiot gives it about cause and effect which the research doesn't speak to at all but the author pretends it does.
But, like all such science these days--it's just a very tiny slice of the whole reality. Not a lot of robust inferences one can draw from such tiny slices of reality.
But the data on the tiny slice is valid data and not all that different from research the last decade or two in that field.
Are you a chronic skeptic? Chronic naysayer?
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