Maybe they are on the way to finding "the Gene"

De Rebel

From the Irish Examiner

Gays and lesbians have 'gender-bender' brains

Gay men and lesbians have gender-bending brains that contribute to their effeminate and “butch” stereotypes, it was claimed today.

A new study has found that gay men really do think like women, while lesbians show a similar affinity with men.

In tests, scientists found that gay men excelled at mental tasks women generally perform better than men, but were not so good at tasks traditionally seen as “male”.

Similarly, lesbians did as badly as heterosexual men in a test geared to get the best out of women.

The traits seem to be “hard-wired” into the brain before birth by varying levels of exposure to the male hormone testosterone, say scientists from the Institute of Psychiatry in London.

Men are generally better than women at spatial perception – the ability to mentally reposition shapes and objects and judge the orientation of lines.

It is for this reason men despair at the apparent ineptitude of women trying to read maps and park cars.

Qazi Rahman and Glenn Wilson conducted a series of neurocognitive tests of spatial skill. They found that gay men performed less well than heterosexual men, but matched the ability of women.

But gay men performed better than heterosexuals and as well as women at remembering the locations of objects in an array.

In several language tests, traditionally a female strong point, gay men did as well as heterosexual women. Lesbians, on the other hand, performed the tests as poorly as “straight” men.

Dr Rahman said: “Because we know that performance on these cognitive tests depends on the integrity of specific brain regions, the differences implicate robust differences between the brains of homosexual and heterosexual men and women and suggest that hormonal factors early in development (probably during the 1st trimester of pregnancy) produce these differences.”

The findings are published in a series of articles in the journals Neuropsychology and Psychoneuroendocrinology.

They may help explain why gay men and lesbians often suffer mental health problems quite different from those of heterosexuals, the authors claim.

Dr Rahman said: “The fact that gay men and lesbians show cross-sex shifts in their brain functioning might also be related, partly, to the cross-sex shifts in their presentation of certain mental health problems, such as higher levels of anxiety disorders, depression and eating disorders (found more in women) in gay men.

“Unravelling variations among groups of people in brain function is becoming an important area for research in human mental health, and a thorough scientific understanding of the biological and social factors which shape human sexual orientation is necessary so we can begin to tackle the mental health problems that gay men and lesbians may suffer from.”

The researchers also found that gay men and lesbians both had longer ring fingers relative to their index fingers than heterosexual men and women.

Relatively long ring fingers are a sign of exposure to elevated levels of the male hormone testosterone in the womb.

The findings supported the idea that high, not low, testosterone levels in men produce shifts in sexual preference.

But the evidence suggested that the testosterone levels involved were not high enough to be damaging.

This indicated that homosexuality was a normal biological phenomenon, and not the result of biological fault.

So thats what causes us all to be "funny"................

HerrLipp

Interesting, I don't fall into any of those stereotypes. I perform better at "male" tasks than "female" tasks. I was good at maths and sciences in school, and relatively **** at languages.

De Rebel

Originally posted by HerrLipp
Interesting, I don't fall into any of those stereotypes. I perform better at "male" tasks than "female" tasks. I was good at maths and sciences in school, and relatively **** at languages.

ditto. not to mention map reading, one of the things i always excelled at. maybe i'm really a closet hetrosexual.......

Shinji

That's where all this stuff breaks down, I guess - where you have people who are perfectly normal within their own gender in terms of what they're adept at and how their thought processes work, but just happen to have a disposition towards falling in love with people of their own gender...

There are certainly a lot of gay people who conform to the sorts of things the above report is talking about. However, there are equally a lot of gay people who are exactly the same as their straight counterparts in every way except that the picture sat on their desk is of a boyfriend rather than a girlfriend.

Oh, and god knows there are enough gay men who are every bit as utterly confused by the female mind as straight men are