NYT: Gay Men Are Found to Have Different Scent of Attraction

[Nothing Without Hope]

Interesting observations, and it sounds like this group's related work with gay women will also be revealing when it is finished and published. (At present, their only comment is that it is "complicated.") They looked for evidence of pheromones and they found them.

The research article on which this NYT report is based will be published Tuesday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by Dr. Ivanka Savic and colleagues at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.

http://nytimes.com/2005/05/09/science/09cnd-smell.html

Gay Men Are Found to Have Different Scent of Attraction

By NICHOLAS WADE
Published: May 10, 2005

Using a brain imaging technique, Swedish researchers have shown that homosexual and heterosexual men respond differently to two odors that may be involved in sexual arousal, and that the gay men respond in the same way as women.

(snip)

The estrogen-like compound, though it activated the usual smell-related regions in women, lighted up the hypothalamus in men. This is a region in the central base of the brain that governs sexual behavior and, through its control of the pituitary gland lying just beneath it, the hormonal state of the body.

The male sweat chemical, on the other hand, did just the opposite; it activated mostly the hypothalamus in women and the smell-related regions in men. The two chemicals seemed to be leading a double life, playing the role of odor with one sex and of pheromone with another.

(snip - says they added a third group - gay men, and their response were like those of the women. Also, they have done work with gay women and the results are "complicated" and not yet ready for publication.)

(snip)

The finding is similar to a report in 1991 by Dr. Simon LeVay that a small region of the hypothalamus is twice as large in straight men as in women or gay men. The brain scanning technique used by the Swedish researchers lacks the resolution to see the region studied by Dr. LeVay, which is a mere millimeter or so across. But both findings suggest that the hypothalamus is organized in a way related to sexual orientation.

(snip)

[Psephos]

1. Don't tell Lawrence Summers. n/t

[Nothing Without Hope]

2. The funny part of this is that it's SWEDISH scientists who did the study

Some knuckle-dragging wingnut is bound to notice that and make some comment on how they're all gay over there anyway.

[jojo54]

3. You beat me to this story

I heard about this story on WCAU 10 (Philly station). Here's the link if anyone wants to read up.

http://www.nbc10.com/health/4468126/detail.html

I'm just happy that someone came out and said "it's biological, not learned". Now these fundies who claim that gays shouldn't be teachers or mentors, or the like can take their theories and shove 'em!

[Nothing Without Hope]

4. I'll post a headsup about it with a link to this thread in GD later and

hope people will keep it kicked long enough to spread the word. I'll post the abstract to the PNAS (you can imagine how we pronounced that journal's acronym in grad school) journal shortly in the current thread.

[Nothing Without Hope]

5. Here is the "official" abstract of this story at the journal site

You can purchase access to the full article by following the links. PNAS is one of the most widely available journals; any even halfway decent scientific or medical library will have it.

http://tinyurl.com/dboow
Published online before print May 9, 2005
Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 10.1073/pnas.0407998102

Brain response to putative pheromones in homosexual men

Ivanka Savic *, Hans Berglund , and Per Lindström *

Departments of *Clinical Neuroscience and Medicine, Karolinska University Hospital, 171 76 Stockholm, Sweden; and Department of Neuroscience, Center for Gender-Related Medicine, Karolinska Institute, 171 77 Stockholm, Sweden

Edited by Jan-Åke Gustafsson, Karolinska Institute, Huddinge, Sweden, and approved April 4, 2005 (received for review October 27, 2004)

The testosterone derivative 4,16-androstadien-3-one (AND) and the estrogen-like steroid estra-1,3,5(10),16-tetraen-3-ol (EST) are candidate compounds for human pheromones. AND is detected primarily in male sweat, whereas EST has been found in female urine. In a previous positron emission tomography study, we found that smelling AND and EST activated regions covering sexually dimorphic nuclei of the anterior hypothalamus, and that this activation was differentiated with respect to sex and compound. In the present study, the pattern of activation induced by AND and EST was compared among homosexual men, heterosexual men, and heterosexual women. In contrast to heterosexual men, and in congruence with heterosexual women, homosexual men displayed hypothalamic activation in response to AND. Maximal activation was observed in the medial preoptic area/anterior hypothalamus, which, according to animal studies, is highly involved in sexual behavior. As opposed to putative pheromones, common odors were processed similarly in all three groups of subjects and engaged only the olfactory brain (amygdala, piriform, orbitofrontal, and insular cortex). These findings show that our brain reacts differently to the two putative pheromones compared with common odors, and suggest a link between sexual orientation and hypothalamic neuronal processes.
Author contributions: I.S. designed research; I.S., H.B., and P.L. performed research; I.S. analyzed data; P.L. recruited subjects; and I.S. wrote the paper.

To whom correspondence should be addressed at: Department of Neuroscience, Karolinska Institute, Retzius väg 8, 171 77 Stockholm, Sweden.

Ivanka Savic, E-mail: [e-mail]

[Nothing Without Hope]

6. This needs wide visibility, so I have reposted as a new thread in GD

here:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=3628241&mesg_id=3628241

I put the NYT excerpt and the PNAS abstract in the OP of the new GD thread and hope it is kept kicked and visible.

[rodeodance]

7. They used a total sample of 36 persons (12 in each group)-which is prob.

the mininal that can be used in a scientific study of statistical significance (got this info from the published science journal article). As in all science, it is the cummulative findings that matter. Caution is key in this one isolated study.


From NYTimes article:
......"The big question is not where homosexuality comes from, but where does sexuality come from," said Dr. Dean Hamer, a geneticist at the National Institutes of Health.

The different pattern of activity that Dr. Savic sees in the brains of gay men could be either a cause of their sexual orientation or an effect of it. If sexual orientation has a genetic cause, or is influenced by hormones in the womb or at puberty, then the neurons in the hypothalamus could wire themselves up in a way that permanently shapes which sex a person is attracted to.

Alternatively, Dr. Savic's finding could be just a consequence of straight and gay men's using their brain in different ways.

"We cannot tell if the different pattern is cause or effect," Dr. Savic said. "The study does not give any answer to these crucial questions.".....

[Nothing Without Hope]

8. This Swedish study and an additional study are reported by the BBC:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4532029.stm

Sniffing out potential partners

Humans are highly skilled at sniffing out suitable sexual partners, research has found.

(snip)

Lead researcher Dr Charles Wysocki said: "Our findings support the contention that gender preference has a biological component that is reflected in both the production of different body odours, and in the perception of and response to body odours."

(snip)

Dr Nick Neave, a biological psychologist at Northumbria University, told the BBC News website that there was no doubt that pheromones played a key role in sexual attraction in animals.

However, he said their role in humans was probably considerably more complex.

"Studies have shown that spraying pheromones around does not elicit a specific behavioural response in humans. It is more likely that they are linked to subtle perceptual and behavioural changes," he said.

(snip)