Sunday, May 15, 2005

Armpit smell reveals if a person is gay

I think they should add arm-pit sniffing to Speed Dating! Would save everyone time and heartache and is easier than giving show tunes quizzes.

http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/living/health/11604958.htm

Posted on Tue, May. 10, 2005 
Gay men respond differently to pheromones




Associated Press

The sexual area of a gay man's brain works a lot like that of a woman when exposed to a particular stimulus, researchers say.

In an experiment, men and heterosexual women sniffed a chemical from the male hormone testosterone. The homosexual men's brains responded differently from those of heterosexual males, and in a similar way to the women's brains.

"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 atthe 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 brains of different groups responded similarly to ordinary odors such as lavender, but differed in their response to the chemicals thought to be pheromones, lead researcher Ivanka Savic said.

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