Similarities Among Brains Of Gay Men And Straight Women

Homosexuality is no longer defined as a mental illness (it was, you know, by the American Psychiatric Association until 1973), but researchers from Sweden’s Karolinska Institute have joined the number of researchers who have studied the brain to see if there’s a connection between it and our sexual orientation.

The results?

Simply put, researchers found symmetry among the brains of gay men and straight women, as well as among the brains of lesbians and straight men.

Brain scans of 90 volunteers showed that the brains of heterosexual men and homosexual women were slightly asymmetric with the right hemisphere slightly larger than the left, Ivanka Savic and Pers Lindstrom wrote. The brains of gay men and heterosexual women were not.

The researchers noted that the “observations cannot be easily attributed to perception or behavior” and they don’t know whether they relate to “fetal or postnatal development” nor do they know “whether the differences in brain shape are inherited or due to exposure to hormones such as testosterone in the womb and if they are responsible for sexual orientation.”

They plan to study the brains of newborn babies to see if they can predict sexual orientation.

That’s pretty interesting, but I wonder how many of you would sign your kids up for that? I think I’d rather just let my future child come out on his/her own.

To read more about studies regarding homosexuality and mental health, check out Homosexuality: It’s All In Your Head and What?! Blacks Can Be Black…AND GAY?!

If you have a mental illness and are still living the life you love, head on over to This Is Why I ROCK! and enter!