In <3j5rq2$20e at netaxs.com> swallow at netaxs.com (Ruder Than You) writes:
>Dag Stenberg (stenberg at cc.Helsinki.FI) wrote:
>: Tara Marchand; (t_marcha at psych) wrote:
>: } Hi. I'm looking for references concerning differences in brain structure,
>: } function, etc. between lesbian/bisexual women and straight women. I've
>: } found a few articles but think there might be more that I'm just not
>: } locating.
>: My feeling is that there is too little material available to be of any
>: great help. Collecting brains from known lesbians with no other gross
>: brain pathology may take some time, and somebody must have enough
>: interest to make relevant morphological study.
>: As I remember, the material on male homosexuals is rather small, and
>: the found differences minimal, plus the implications of these minimal
>: differences are obscure and highly speculative. I refer to the autopsy
>: studies revealing laterality differences in one of four minor hypothalamic
>: nuclei without any certain function, where male heterosexuals differed
>: from both females and male homosexuals. I think there were no lesbian
>: females in that study, illustrating the difficulty to get material.
>: It would do no harm if I were wrong in this.
> Funny, I have never heard anything about any biological difference in
>women, but I have read quite a bit about the difference in homosexual men.
> Steven LeVey a biologist, claims to have found a difference in the
>brains of homosexual men. The third institial nucleus, about the size of
>the head of a pin, has been found to be smaller in the brains of gay men.
> While this may be true, it is still not accepted as a fact that
>this is the cause or result of homosexuality.
The tissue for LeVay's study came from patients who had died from AIDS.
The sexual history of females, particularly lesbians, is difficult to
come by for these types of studies because it usually isn't documented
along with the cause of death, etc. Whereas it more generally is in the
case of males who die from AIDS. That was the explanation Roger Gorski
gave when he spoke here at ISU. Gorski gave a great talk and went
through all the evidence available on this subject. He (along with many
others) is fairly critical of Levay's work, based on the low n's, the
variability in the results and the lack of sufficient replication.
Gorski and his graduate student (allen?) published another study based
on morphological differences in homosexual males, I believe it was in
the corpus callosum. y mthe
I guess my rambling point is that IS difficult to find subject material
for the lesbian vs. hetersoexual female study. That seems to be the
obvious question that everyone wants to know, but it's not yet been
studied to my knowledge. About the point made about Levay's study,
there is yet *no* correlation between the morphological differnece in
INAH-3 and functional differences.
>--
>HISTORY, n. An account mostly false, of events mostly unimportant, which
>are brought about by rulers mostly knaves, and soldiers mostly fools.
> _The Devil's Dictionary_
>------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>swallow at netaxs.comswallow at deeptht.armory.com
--
Paul L. "Pro" Pearson
President, Kurt Rambis Fan Club (unofficial)
Ames, IA Chapter
