Category: homosexuality

Parenting Rewires the Male Brain

On By A.P.In Bar-Ilan University, Communication, Elizabeth Norton, female brain, homosexuality, Human Behavior, Israel, Kevin Pelphrey, male brain, Neurology, Neuron, neuroplasticity, Neuroscience, neuroscientist, oxytocin, parenting, parenting network, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Ruth Feldman, Science, sexuality, Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, The BrainLeave a comment

By Elizabeth Norton

Cultures around the world have long assumed that women are hardwired to be mothers. But a new study suggests that caring for children awakens a parenting network in the brain—even turning on some of the same circuits in men as it does in women. The research implies that the neural underpinnings of the so-called maternal instinct aren’t unique to women, or activated solely by hormones, but can be developed by anyone who chooses to be a parent.

“This is the first study to look at the way dads’ brains change with child care experience,” says Kevin Pelphrey, a neuroscientist at Yale University who was not involved with the study. “What we thought of as a purely maternal circuit can also be turned on just by being a parent—which is neat, given the way our culture is changing with respect to shared responsibility and marriage equality.”

The findings come from an investigation of two types of households in Israel: traditional families consisting of a biological mother and father, in which the mother assumed most of the caregiving duties, though the fathers were very involved; and homosexual male couples, one of whom was the biological father, who’d had the child with the help of surrogate mothers. The two-father couples had taken the babies home shortly after birth and shared caregiving responsibilities equally. All participants in the study were first-time parents.

Researchers led by Ruth Feldman, a psychologist and neuroscientist at Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan, Israel, visited with the families in their homes, videotaping each parent with the child and then the parents and children alone. The team, which included collaborators at the Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center in Israel, also took saliva samples from all parents before and after the videotaped sessions to measure oxytocin—a hormone that’s released at times of intimacy and affection and is widely considered the “trust hormone.” Within a week of the home visit, the participants underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging scanning to determine how their brains reacted to the videotapes of themselves with their infants.

The mothers, their husbands, and the homosexual father-father couples all showed the activation of what the researchers term a “parenting network” that incorporated two linked but separate pathways in the brain. One circuit encompasses evolutionarily ancient structures such as the amygdala, insula, and nucleus accumbens, which handle strong emotions, attention, vigilance, and reward. The other pathway turns up in response to learning and experience and includes parts of the prefrontal cortex and an area called the superior temporal sulcus.

In the mothers, activation was stronger in the amygdala-centered network, whereas the heterosexual fathers showed more activity in the network that’s more experience-dependent. At first glance, Feldman says, the finding would seem to suggest that mothers are more wired up to nurture, protect, and possibly worry about their children. The fathers, in contrast, might have to develop these traits through tending, communicating, and learning from their babies what various sounds mean and what the child needs.

“It’s as if the father’s amygdala can shut off when there’s a woman around,” Feldman observes. It could be assumed, she says, that this circuitry is activated only by the rush of hormones during conception, pregnancy, and childbirth.

But the brains of the homosexual couples, in which each partner was a primary caregiver, told a different story. All of these men showed activity that mirrored that of the mothers, with much higher activation in the amygdala-based network, the team reports online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

This finding argues strongly that the experience of hands-on parenting, with no female mother anywhere in the picture, can configure a caregiver’s brain in the same way that pregnancy and childbirth do, Feldman says.

She adds that in the heterosexual fathers, the activation of the amygdala-based network was proportional to the amount of time they spent with the baby, though the activity wasn’t as high as in the mothers or in the two-father couples.

Feldman does not believe that the brain activity of the primary-caregiving fathers differed because they were gay. Previous imaging studies, she notes, show no difference in brain activation when homosexual and heterosexual participants viewed pictures of their loved ones.

Future studies, Pelphrey says, might focus more closely on this question. “But it’s clear that we’re all born with the circuitry to help us be sensitive caregivers, and the network can be turned up through parenting.”

http://news.sciencemag.org/brain-behavior/2014/05/parenting-rewires-male-brain

Vatican spends $30 million to purchase apartments above Europe’s largest gay sauna: Europa Multiclub

On By A.P.In Cardinal Ivan Dias, Catholic church, Catholicism, Europa Multiclub, gay sauna, homosexuality, Human Behavior, Religion, sexuality, The VaticanLeave a comment

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The latest Vatican deal to leave Catholics around the world clutching their rosaries involves the purchase of a block of Rome real-estate that happens to include Europe’s largest gay bathhouse, Europa Multiclub.

The $30 million dollar investment was paid out to find an extravagant home for Cardinal Ivan Dias, a 76-year old Vatican official, and house a dozen more high-level Catholic priests.

Those who are defending Cardinal Dias in light of the new information claim he chose the location to “provide spiritual guidance” to the gay men who enjoyed the sauna.

Vatican purchases apartments above Europe’s largest gay sauna

Homosexuality may start in the womb

On By A.P.In Australian black swans, California gulls, Darwin, epigenetics, gay genes, homosexuality, Human Behavior, Marlene Zuk, Placenta, Relationship, Santa Barbara, Science, sexuality, sheep, testosterone, The Brain, The Quarterly Review of Biology, Twin Cities, William Rice, Y chromosomeLeave a comment

sn-homosexuality

 

From a strictly Darwinian viewpoint, homosexuality shouldn’t still be around. It isn’t the best way to pass along one’s genes, and to complicate the picture further, no “gay genes” have even been identified. According to a newly released hypothesis, the explanation may not lie in DNA itself. Instead, as an embryo develops, sex-related genes are turned on and off in response to fluctuating levels of hormones in the womb, produced by both mother and child. This tug of war benefits the unborn child, keeping male or female development on a steady course even amid spikes in hormones. But if these so-called epigenetic changes persist once the child is born and has children of its own, some of those offspring may be homosexual, the study proposes.

Evolutionary geneticist William Rice of the University of California, Santa Barbara, felt there had to be a reason why homosexuality didn’t just fade away down the generations. Research estimates that about 8% of the population is gay, and homosexuality is known to run in families. If one of a set of identical twins is gay, there’s a 20% probability that the other will be, too.

Furthermore, Rice notes, “homosexuality isn’t just a human thing.” Among California gulls, which he watches from his office window, about 14% of pairs are female-female. In Australian black swans, some 6% of pairs are male-male, and 8% of male sheep are attracted exclusively to male partners.

But many genetic screens have failed to turn up genes that are responsible for sexual orientation. So to find out what makes homosexuality persist, Rice and colleagues began a comprehensive survey of the literature.

According to conventional wisdom, an embryo becomes a boy when a gene on the Y chromosome triggers the development of testes, which then begin to produce male sex hormones, including testosterone, at about the 8th week of gestation. With no Y chromosome and hence no testosterone, the embryo becomes a girl.

But testosterone doesn’t explain everything, the researchers found. For one thing, female fetuses are exposed to small amounts of the hormone from their adrenal glands, the placenta, and the mother’s endocrine system. At many key points of gestation, male and female fetuses are often exposed to similar amounts of testosterone. Levels of the hormone can even be higher than normal in females and lower than normal in males without any effect on genital or brain structure.

Rice and his co-workers were more intrigued by studies showing that male and female fetuses respond differently to the hormones that surround them, even when one hormone is temporarily higher. In their study, published online today in The Quarterly Review of Biology, the authors propose that differences in sensitivity to sex hormones result from “epigenetic” changes. These are changes that affect not the structure of a gene but when, if, and how much of it is activated—by chemically altering a gene’s promoter region or “on” switch, for example. Epigenetic changes at key points in the pathway through which testosterone exerts its effects on the fetus could blunt or enhance the hormone’s activity as needed, the authors suggest.

Although epigenetic changes are usually temporary, they involve alterations in the proteins that bind together the long strands of DNA. Thus, they can sometimes be handed down to offspring. According to the hypothesis, homosexuality may be a carry-over from one’s parents’ own prenatal resistance to the hormones of the opposite sex. The “epi-marks” that adjusted parental genes to resist excess testosterone, for example, may alter gene activation in areas of the child’s brain involved in sexual attraction and preference. “These epigenetic changes protect mom and dad during their own early development,” Rice says. The initial benefit to the parents may explain why the trait of homosexuality persists throughout evolution, he says.

“The authors have done a terrific job providing a mechanism for genetic variation, especially a variation that might not be expected to persist because it’s so tightly bound to reproduction,” says evolutionary biologist Marlene Zuk of the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. But she adds that to go from changes in gene expression to why someone is attracted to a person of the same sex is a question for which science may never fill in all the blanks.

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2012/12/homosexuality-may-start-in-the-w.html?ref=hp

Tycoon offers HK$500 million to wed his lesbian daughter

On By A.P.In Cecil Caho Sze-tsung, Gigi Chao, homosexuality, Hong Kong, Human Behavior, lesbian, Marriage, Paris, Ray Gaudette, Relationship, Sean Eav, Wealth and Power, weddingLeave a comment

 

 The daughter of the tycoon who on Tuesday offered HK$500 million (US$64 million) to any man who would marry her found the proposal “quite entertaining,” she told CNN.

Gigi Chao said her father, property developer Cecil Chao Sze-tsung, “loves her very much” and was aware of the cash offer before it was first reported Tuesday by local Hong Kong media.

The tycoon’s offer came after Chinese media reports last week that she married another woman, her long-time companion Sean Eav, in a civil ceremony in Paris last week. Asked by CNN to confirm her civil union, Chao said she was “not in a position to verify that.”

Her father, however, was unequivocal, telling CNN “reports of Gigi being married is not true, it’s a rumor.” However, he did confirm that he is offering the multi-million dollar bounty for a future son-in-law: Any nationality or wealth of the suitor is fine, the only requirement is that the man “loves my daughter, and she loves him.”

Asked if she would consider her father’s offer, Chao said, “we will see.”

The 76-year-old tycoon himself has never married, and has long earned a reputation on the pages of local newspapers and magazines in the arms of beautiful women, having once bragged of having had 10,000 girlfriends, the South China Morning Post reported.

Gigi Chao is an executive director of Cheuk Nang Holdings, a luxury property development company run by her father.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/27/business/hong-kong-tycoon-daughter-reward/index.html?hpt=hp_t3

Thanks to Ray Gaudette for bringing this to the attention of the It’s Interesting community.

Pupil dilation in response to viewing erotic videos indicates sexual orientation

On By A.P.In bisexuality, Cornell University, erotic video, heterosexuality, homosexuality, Human Behavior, New York City, pupil dilation, pupillary reponse, Science, sexual orientation, sexuality, The Brain, Weill Medical CollegeLeave a comment

For the first time, researchers have used a specialized camera to measure pupillary changes in people watching erotic videos, the changes in pupil dilation revealing where the participant is located on the heterosexual-homosexual spectrum. The researchers at Cornell University who developed the technique say it provides an accurate method of gauging the precise sexual orientation of a subject. The work is detailed in the journal PLoS ONE.

Previously, researchers trying to assess sexual orientation simply asked people about their sexuality or used intrusive physiological measures, such as assessing their genital arousal.

“We wanted to find an alternative measure that would be an automatic indication of sexual orientation, but without being as invasive as previous measures. Pupillary responses are exactly that,” says lead researcher Gerulf Rieger. “With this new technology we are able to explore sexual orientation of people who would never participate in a study on genital arousal, such as people from traditional cultures. This will give us a much better understanding how sexuality is expressed across the planet.”

Experimenting with the technique, the researchers found heterosexual men showed strong pupillary responses to sexual videos of women, and little to men. Heterosexual women, however, showed pupillary responses to both sexes. This result confirms previous research suggesting that women have a very different type of sexuality than men.

Interestingly, the new study sheds new light on the long-standing debate on male bisexuality. Previous notions were that most bisexual men do not base their sexual identity on their physiological sexual arousal but on romantic and identity issues. Contrary to this claim, bisexual men in the new study showed substantial pupil dilations to sexual videos of both men and women.

“We can now finally argue that a flexible sexual desire is not simply restricted to women – some men have it, too, and it is reflected in their pupils,” said co-researcher Ritch C. Savin-Williams. “In fact, not even a division into ‘straight,’ ‘bi,’ and ‘gay’ tells the full story. Men who identity as ‘mostly straight’ really exist both in their identity and their pupil response; they are more aroused to males than straight men, but much less so than both bisexual and gay men.”

Thanks to Dr. A.R. for bringing this to the attention of the It’s Interesting community.