22.1.09

Lesbian girls have a different brain structure


Lesbian girls have a different brain structure

It is no news that people who have unconventional sexual orientation look differently. However the study showed that they also think differently.

Lesbians’ brains react differently to sex hormones than those of heterosexual women. An earlier study of gay men also showed their brain response was different from straight men — an even stronger difference than has now been found in lesbians. 

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.

Heterosexual women found the male and female pheromones about equally pleasant, while straight men and lesbians liked the female pheromone more than the male one. Men and lesbians also found the male hormone more irritating than the female one, while straight women were more likely to be irritated by the female hormone than the male one.


Others debate the meaning of the new research.

"It certainly suggests biological processes are at play,"  "And they certainly could be intersecting with some sort of environmental effects." 

Although Savic told one reporter that her data suggest programs that attempt to change sexual orientation likely would not work for most people, she was careful not to attribute sexuality to differences in the brain. Rather than sexual orientation being determined by neural biology, the opposite may instead – or also – be true: that learned behavior influences brain anatomy and physiology.

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