Wednesday, May 10, 2006

Sex on the brain

New Scientist Breaking News - Clue to sexual attraction found in lesbian brain

The study reported above strikes me as rather useless. The fact the lesbians brains seem to respond differently from those of straight women to a male armpit chemical doesn't tell us a hell of a lot, does it? As the report says:

"But our study can't answer questions of cause and effect," cautions lead researcher Ivanka Savic at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden. "We can't say whether the differences are because of pre-existing differences in their brains, or if past sexual experiences have conditioned their brains to respond differently."

I would have been surprised if their brains did respond the same way.

The article says:

Despite these issues, the scientists agree that mapping these differences in brain activity between heterosexual and homosexual women is an important step towards understanding how sexual orientation manifests in the brain.

Given this chicken and egg problem about sexual differences in brains, and that the cost of such studies can't be so cheap, haven't we got many better things for which to be scanning brains?

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