Great Minds Think Alike

International News, By Joal, 17th June, 2008

Eyeing the same man at the bar may not be the only thing gay guys and straight girls have in common. According to a recent study, the similarities run much deeper than that.

Released today, the study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences provides evidence for a biological answer to the eternal question of sexuality.

The study suggests that gay men and straight women share characteristics in the area of the brain responsible for emotion, mood and anxiety, according to the study from Sweden’s Karolinska Institute. It also showed the same similarities among lesbians and straight men.

Analysing the brain scans of 90 volunteers, it appeared gay women and straight men both had right hemispheres of the brain slightly larger than that of their left.

The study didn’t find any correlation in brain size between gay men and straight women, but their emotional responses and activation patterns appear to have “remarkable similarities” according to the study’s authors. That’s probably why the gay man / fag hag relationship works so well.

Neuroscientist Simon LeVay responded to the report by saying that the recent research seemed to reiterate that “that sexual orientation is part of a package. It is not an isolated trait.”

LeVay was among the first to identify differences in the brains of homosexual and heterosexual people over 17 years ago. His research identified a region of the hypothalamus that was larger in straight men than in women and gay men. A gay man himself, LeVay said the new research made an even stronger case for homosexuality being a function of biology and not choice.

“Nothing about the left and right brain has anything to do with sexuality, he says. “The preponderance of research argues rather strongly for a common biological process that is contributing not only to sexual orientation, but to other things as well.”

Studies regarding sexuality have included environmental, neurological and biological factors, but none have drawn any definitive conclusions.

“These observations motivate more extensive investigations of larger study groups and prompt for a better understanding of the neurobiology of homosexuality,” said the authors of the Karolinska Institute paper.

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