Post by Rev. Jim Cunningham on Nov 19, 2008 4:39:46 GMT -5
From: Manager Rev. Jim (Original Message) Sent: 2/25/2007 1:31 AM
Dear brothers and sisters,
Some recent amazing discoveries in biology are helping to prove that hetero and homosexual sexual identities are natural occurances in humans. I would like to share two of them them with you, if you have not already seen these reports. The first report, by the Associated Press, specifically concerns heterosexual men and women and homosexual men, and the second, by National Geographic, concerns lesbians. I would really love to hear everyone's thoughts about this after you've read both articles (below).
In Jesus,
Rev. Jim
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS - MAY 2005
WASHINGTON (AP) — Gay men's brains respond differently from those of heterosexual males when exposed to a sexual stimulus, researchers have found. The homosexual men's brains responded more like those of women when the men sniffed a chemical from the male hormone testosterone.
"It is one more piece of evidence ... that is showing that sexual orientation is not all learned," said Sandra Witelson, an expert on brain anatomy and sexual orientation at the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada.
Witelson, who was not part of the research team, said the findings clearly show a biological involvement in sexual orientation.
The study, published in Tuesday's issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was done by researchers at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden.
They exposed heterosexual men and women and homosexual men to chemicals derived from male and female sex hormones.
These chemicals are thought to be pheromones — molecules known to trigger responses such as defense and sex in many animals.
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.
The Swedish study was one of a series looking at whether parts of the brain involved in reproduction differ in response to odors and pheromones, lead researcher Ivanka Savic said.
The brains of different groups responded similarly to ordinary odors such as lavender, but differed in their response to the chemicals thought to be pheromones, Savic said.
The Swedish researchers divided 36 subjects into three groups — heterosexual men, heterosexual women and homosexual men. They studied the brain response to sniffing the chemicals, using PET scans. All the subjects were healthy, unmedicated, right-handed and HIV negative.
When they sniffed smells like cedar or lavender, all of the subjects' brains reacted only in the olfactory region that handles smells.
But when confronted by a chemical from testosterone, the male hormone, portions of the brains active in sexual activity were activated in straight women and in gay men, but not in straight men, the researchers found.
The response in gay men and straight women was concentrated in the hypothalamus with a maximum in the preoptic area that is active in hormonal and sensory responses necessary for sexual behavior, the researchers said.
And when estrogen, the female hormone was used, there was only a response in the olfactory portion of the brains of straight women. Homosexual men had their primary response also in the olfactory area, with a very small reaction in the hypothalamus, while heterosexual men responded strongly in the reproductive region of the brain.
Savic said the group is also doing a study involving homosexual women but those results are not yet complete.
In a separate study looking at people's response to the body odors of others, researchers in Philadelphia found sharp differences between gay and straight men and women.
"Our findings support the contention that gender preference has a biological component that is reflected in both the production of different body odors and in the perception of and response to body odors," said neuroscientist Charles Wysocki, who led the study.
In particular, he said, finding differences in body odors between gay and straight individuals indicates a physical difference.
It's hard to see how a simple choice to be gay or lesbian would influence the production of body odor, he said.
Wysocki's team at the Monell Chemical Senses Center studied the response of 82 heterosexual and homosexual men and heterosexual and homosexual women to the odors of underarm sweat collected from 24 donors of varied gender and sexual orientation.
They found that gay men differed from heterosexual men and women and from lesbian women, both in terms of which body odors gay men preferred and how their own body odors were regarded by the other groups.
Gay men preferred odors from gay men, while odors from gay men were the least preferred by heterosexual men and women and by lesbian women in the study. Their findings, released Monday, are to be published in the journal Psychological Science in September.
The Swedish research was funded by the Swedish Medical Research Council, the Karolinska Institute and the Magnus Bergvall Foundation. Wysocki's research was supported by the Monell Center.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC - MAY 2006
Lesbian women respond differently than straight women when exposed to suspected sexual chemicals, according to a new brain imaging study.
The finding builds on previous research that suggest that gay men responded in a way more similar to heterosexual women than heterosexual men when exposed to a synthetic chemical.
The natural version of this chemical reportedly appears in high concentrations in male sweat.
The new study extends the research to homosexual women.
It found that lesbians' brains respond in a fashion more similar to that of heterosexual men than of heterosexual women when exposed to the sweat chemical and a synthetic chemical that has been detected in female urine.
"Both studies … indicate that the physiological response in brain regions associated with reproduction are different in homosexual- and heterosexual persons," Ivanka Savic, a neuroscientist at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, said in an email.
Savic, who is the lead author of both studies, cautioned that neither study proves people are born gay. The response could be biological or learned. Determining an answer will require further study.
The most recent results were published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Savic added that the similarity between homosexual men and heterosexual women seems stronger than the similarity between lesbians and heterosexual men, highlighting the notion that male homosexuality is quite different than female homosexuality.
While pinpointing how homosexual men and lesbians differ requires further study, Savic said, "possibly the lesbian group is more heterogeneous and the mechanisms more diverse."
Smell Test
In the current study, Savic and her colleagues exposed lesbians and heterosexual women and men to a testosterone derivative produced in male sweat known as AND. The subjects were also exposed to an estrogen-like compound called EST found in female urine.
Some scientists believe AND and EST are pheromones, substances emitted by an individual to evoke a specific response in another member of the same species. In many animals, pheromones play a role in sexual attraction.
According to the results, lesbians processed neural responses to AND and EST more like heterosexual men than heterosexual women.
This lends further support to the idea that the chemicals activate the brain differently from common odors, Savic says.
She adds that she and her colleagues are cautious to call the compounds pheromones. In the paper, they call them "candidate compounds for human pheromones."
Charles Wysocki is a member of the Monell Chemical Senses Center and a professor of anatomy at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.
He says the new study clearly shows that lesbians, heterosexual women, and heterosexual men respond differently to the chemical compounds in male sweat and female urine. But he adds that the response is likely odor-derived and not pheromone-derived.
"The difference across the three groups in response to odors is intriguing, [and] those differences need some sort of explanation," he said.
What Are They Sniffing?
Wysocki disputes the evidence suggesting that AND and EST are pheromones.
"What [evidence] is available comes from the area of entrepreneurial pursuit," he said.
According to Wysocki, California-based entrepreneur David Berliner introduced the compounds into a product he marketed as a way to arouse the opposite sex.
Arousal would come through detection of pheromones with the vomeronasal organ, a bunch of nerve endings in the nasal cavity of some vertebrates believed to be sensitive to pheromones.
"Unfortunately for Dr. Berliner and his group, the whole concept for a functional vomeronasal organ [in humans] has gone down the tubes in the last decade," Wysocki said.
Wysocki's own research, published in September 2005, has shown that gay men prefer odors from other gay men, while odors from gay men were the least preferred by straight men and women.
Had Savic and colleagues obtained their results using real body odors rather than synthetic compounds of the putative pheromones, Wysocki said "that would be phenomenal. I'd be yelling it out."
Michael Meredith is a neuroscientist at the Florida State University in Tallahassee. He too said the results are "very interesting" but added that the suggestion in the paper's title that the compounds are putative pheromones amounts to "spin."
"It doesn't get to the point what the differences in the brain processes are," he said, adding that any argument over whether the brain response results from an odor or pheromone is "just speculation."
Dear brothers and sisters,
Some recent amazing discoveries in biology are helping to prove that hetero and homosexual sexual identities are natural occurances in humans. I would like to share two of them them with you, if you have not already seen these reports. The first report, by the Associated Press, specifically concerns heterosexual men and women and homosexual men, and the second, by National Geographic, concerns lesbians. I would really love to hear everyone's thoughts about this after you've read both articles (below).
In Jesus,
Rev. Jim
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS - MAY 2005
WASHINGTON (AP) — Gay men's brains respond differently from those of heterosexual males when exposed to a sexual stimulus, researchers have found. The homosexual men's brains responded more like those of women when the men sniffed a chemical from the male hormone testosterone.
"It is one more piece of evidence ... that is showing that sexual orientation is not all learned," said Sandra Witelson, an expert on brain anatomy and sexual orientation at the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada.
Witelson, who was not part of the research team, said the findings clearly show a biological involvement in sexual orientation.
The study, published in Tuesday's issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was done by researchers at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden.
They exposed heterosexual men and women and homosexual men to chemicals derived from male and female sex hormones.
These chemicals are thought to be pheromones — molecules known to trigger responses such as defense and sex in many animals.
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.
The Swedish study was one of a series looking at whether parts of the brain involved in reproduction differ in response to odors and pheromones, lead researcher Ivanka Savic said.
The brains of different groups responded similarly to ordinary odors such as lavender, but differed in their response to the chemicals thought to be pheromones, Savic said.
The Swedish researchers divided 36 subjects into three groups — heterosexual men, heterosexual women and homosexual men. They studied the brain response to sniffing the chemicals, using PET scans. All the subjects were healthy, unmedicated, right-handed and HIV negative.
When they sniffed smells like cedar or lavender, all of the subjects' brains reacted only in the olfactory region that handles smells.
But when confronted by a chemical from testosterone, the male hormone, portions of the brains active in sexual activity were activated in straight women and in gay men, but not in straight men, the researchers found.
The response in gay men and straight women was concentrated in the hypothalamus with a maximum in the preoptic area that is active in hormonal and sensory responses necessary for sexual behavior, the researchers said.
And when estrogen, the female hormone was used, there was only a response in the olfactory portion of the brains of straight women. Homosexual men had their primary response also in the olfactory area, with a very small reaction in the hypothalamus, while heterosexual men responded strongly in the reproductive region of the brain.
Savic said the group is also doing a study involving homosexual women but those results are not yet complete.
In a separate study looking at people's response to the body odors of others, researchers in Philadelphia found sharp differences between gay and straight men and women.
"Our findings support the contention that gender preference has a biological component that is reflected in both the production of different body odors and in the perception of and response to body odors," said neuroscientist Charles Wysocki, who led the study.
In particular, he said, finding differences in body odors between gay and straight individuals indicates a physical difference.
It's hard to see how a simple choice to be gay or lesbian would influence the production of body odor, he said.
Wysocki's team at the Monell Chemical Senses Center studied the response of 82 heterosexual and homosexual men and heterosexual and homosexual women to the odors of underarm sweat collected from 24 donors of varied gender and sexual orientation.
They found that gay men differed from heterosexual men and women and from lesbian women, both in terms of which body odors gay men preferred and how their own body odors were regarded by the other groups.
Gay men preferred odors from gay men, while odors from gay men were the least preferred by heterosexual men and women and by lesbian women in the study. Their findings, released Monday, are to be published in the journal Psychological Science in September.
The Swedish research was funded by the Swedish Medical Research Council, the Karolinska Institute and the Magnus Bergvall Foundation. Wysocki's research was supported by the Monell Center.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC - MAY 2006
Lesbian women respond differently than straight women when exposed to suspected sexual chemicals, according to a new brain imaging study.
The finding builds on previous research that suggest that gay men responded in a way more similar to heterosexual women than heterosexual men when exposed to a synthetic chemical.
The natural version of this chemical reportedly appears in high concentrations in male sweat.
The new study extends the research to homosexual women.
It found that lesbians' brains respond in a fashion more similar to that of heterosexual men than of heterosexual women when exposed to the sweat chemical and a synthetic chemical that has been detected in female urine.
"Both studies … indicate that the physiological response in brain regions associated with reproduction are different in homosexual- and heterosexual persons," Ivanka Savic, a neuroscientist at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, said in an email.
Savic, who is the lead author of both studies, cautioned that neither study proves people are born gay. The response could be biological or learned. Determining an answer will require further study.
The most recent results were published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Savic added that the similarity between homosexual men and heterosexual women seems stronger than the similarity between lesbians and heterosexual men, highlighting the notion that male homosexuality is quite different than female homosexuality.
While pinpointing how homosexual men and lesbians differ requires further study, Savic said, "possibly the lesbian group is more heterogeneous and the mechanisms more diverse."
Smell Test
In the current study, Savic and her colleagues exposed lesbians and heterosexual women and men to a testosterone derivative produced in male sweat known as AND. The subjects were also exposed to an estrogen-like compound called EST found in female urine.
Some scientists believe AND and EST are pheromones, substances emitted by an individual to evoke a specific response in another member of the same species. In many animals, pheromones play a role in sexual attraction.
According to the results, lesbians processed neural responses to AND and EST more like heterosexual men than heterosexual women.
This lends further support to the idea that the chemicals activate the brain differently from common odors, Savic says.
She adds that she and her colleagues are cautious to call the compounds pheromones. In the paper, they call them "candidate compounds for human pheromones."
Charles Wysocki is a member of the Monell Chemical Senses Center and a professor of anatomy at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.
He says the new study clearly shows that lesbians, heterosexual women, and heterosexual men respond differently to the chemical compounds in male sweat and female urine. But he adds that the response is likely odor-derived and not pheromone-derived.
"The difference across the three groups in response to odors is intriguing, [and] those differences need some sort of explanation," he said.
What Are They Sniffing?
Wysocki disputes the evidence suggesting that AND and EST are pheromones.
"What [evidence] is available comes from the area of entrepreneurial pursuit," he said.
According to Wysocki, California-based entrepreneur David Berliner introduced the compounds into a product he marketed as a way to arouse the opposite sex.
Arousal would come through detection of pheromones with the vomeronasal organ, a bunch of nerve endings in the nasal cavity of some vertebrates believed to be sensitive to pheromones.
"Unfortunately for Dr. Berliner and his group, the whole concept for a functional vomeronasal organ [in humans] has gone down the tubes in the last decade," Wysocki said.
Wysocki's own research, published in September 2005, has shown that gay men prefer odors from other gay men, while odors from gay men were the least preferred by straight men and women.
Had Savic and colleagues obtained their results using real body odors rather than synthetic compounds of the putative pheromones, Wysocki said "that would be phenomenal. I'd be yelling it out."
Michael Meredith is a neuroscientist at the Florida State University in Tallahassee. He too said the results are "very interesting" but added that the suggestion in the paper's title that the compounds are putative pheromones amounts to "spin."
"It doesn't get to the point what the differences in the brain processes are," he said, adding that any argument over whether the brain response results from an odor or pheromone is "just speculation."