Do gay people have different brain chemistry
For at least 20 years, neuroscientists have been trying to discover whether there are specific anatomical differences between heterosexual and gay men and women. An early post-mortem study establish that a small region of the anterior hypothalamus was smaller in lesbian men than in heterosexual men, and no unlike from heterosexual women. More recent brain imaging studies reported sexual orientation‐related differences in cortical regions passionate to vision, some asymmetries between the two hemispheres and differences in the thickness of the cortex at the front of the brain.
Overall, these specific brain regions in queer males tended to be similar to heterosexual women (more female‐typical), while these same brain regions lesbian women tended to be similar to heterosexual men (more male‐typical). These initial discoveries led scientists to think that some behavioral and cognitive traits connected to sexual orientation may be reflected in, subtle but consistent, differences in brain anatomy.
Many of these early imaging studies were limited by small sample sizes and did not include female, both heterosexual and homosexual, comparison groups. A recent study addressed
Study Says Brains of Gay Men and Women Are Similar
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Researchers using thinker scans have set up new evidence that biology—and not environment—is at the core of sexual orientation. Scientists at the Stockholm Brain Institute in Sweden state in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA that same-sex attracted men and vertical women share similar traits—most notably in the size of their brains and the activity of the amygdala—an area of the intellect tied to sentiment, anxiety and aggression. The same is true for heterosexual men and lesbians.
Study author, neurologist Ivanka Savic–Berglund, says such characteristics would expand in the womb or in preceding infancy, meaning that psychological or environmental factors played minuscule or no role.
"This is yet another in a drawn-out series of observations showing there's a biological reason for sexual orientation," says Dean Hamer, a molec
Across cultures, 2% to 10% of people report having gay relations. In the U.S., 1% to 2.2% of women and men, respectively, identify as lgbtq+. Despite these numbers, many people still consider homosexual habit to be an anomalous choice. However, biologists have documented homosexual behavior in more than 450 species, arguing that same-sex behavior is not an unnatural choice, and may in fact engage a vital role within populations.
In a 2019 issue of Science magazine, geneticist Andrea Ganna at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and colleagues, described the largest survey to go out for genes connected with same-sex action. By analyzing the DNA of nearly half a million people from the U.S. and the U.K., they concluded that genes account for between 8% and 25% of same-sex behavior.
Numerous studies have established that sex is not just male or female. Rather, it is a continuum that emerges from a person’s genetic makeup. Nonetheless, misconceptions persist that same-sex attraction is a choice that warrants condemnation or conversion, and leads to discrimination and persecution.
I am a molecular biologist and am interested in this new research as it further illuminates the
Sex and the brain
An interesting doubt is whether the brains of gay and straight people are the same or different. One study 1 found that they are slightly different and that the brains of gay men, in the aspects analyzed, are more similar to those of heterosexual women. This would encourage the idea that sexual orientation is a biological issue, something that is encoded in our brain circuits and that is probably from birth. It is another argument against those disgusting pseudo-therapies aimed at “curing” homosexuality, against considering it a sin or a perversion, against discriminating against someone who enriches our neurodiversity and makes us more interesting and better.
The study was conducted at the Stockholm Head Institute. Neurobiologist Ivanka Savic and her colleague Per Linström performed brain MRIs on 90 volunteers who were divided into four groups of equal numbers of participants and similar ages depending on whether they were male or female and whether they defined themselves as heterosexual or homosexual. The statistical analysis showed that the homosexual men and the heterosexual women showed symmetrical brains; that is, with the left and right hemisph