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New research says if you are gay... you were born gay!

What a gay brain

Thursday, 19 June 2008

The gay brain is here, it’s queer and it’s not going shopping. Except for a sat nav. Results of scans of 90 healthy heterosexual, gay and lesbians by the Stockholm Brain Institute has shown gay male and heterosexual female brains share the same characteristics with the right and left brain hemispheres being a very similar size. Lesbians and straight males have been shown to have asymmetrical brains with the right hemisphere significantly larger than the left.

This can explain a variety of differences between the sexes and between the sexualities. Gay men and straight women scored higher in language tests but (frustratingly for their travelling lesbian and straight male partners) shared a poor sense of direction. Straight men and lesbians have more spatial awareness and their brains produce more signals that trigger the flight or flight response

The research is part of the ongoing quest to identify differences between the male and female brain and will help address issues such as why mental disorders affect the genders differently. Depressive illnesses are seen in far more in women whilst autism is four times more likely in boys than girls.

Commenting on the findings for the BBC Dr Qazi Rahman, a lecturer in cognitive biology at Queen Mary, University of London, said, "As far as I'm concerned there is no argument anymore - if you are gay, you are born gay. The brain network which determines what sexual orientation actually 'orients' towards is similar between gay men and straight women, and between gay women and straight men. This makes sense given that gay men have a sexual preference which is like that of women in general, that is, preferring men, and vice versa for lesbian women."