Saturday 29 October 2011

The Biology of Sexual Orientation

My family health issues have subsided, though I'm still swamped with teaching and compiling my thesis.

It's been a month without blogging - the longest gap so far. All I can say is that writing up a PhD thesis will do that to you.

Blogging will continue to be light, but at least won't be non-existent. Hopefully things will be back to normal before Christmas.

In the meantime, for your edification and enjoyment, The Biology of Sexual Orientation - a presentation in 9 parts.

Part I: Introduction:


Part II: Biological Concepts


Part III: A Scientific Approach


Part IV: Family Studies and Birth Order


Part V: Molecular Studies


Part VI: A Neurohormonal Model


Part VII: Functional Cerebral Asymmetry


Part VIII: Hypothalamic Activation


Part IX: Conclusion

2 comments:

Nikola Kovacs said...

Welcome back Zoe ...

That's a very interesting series of videos. Personally I've been of the opinion that sexuality is not an issue that needs a cause to be found. I believed that everyone has the capacity to love anyone else in a Utopian world that never had prejudiced non-hetero relationships.

I still believe that to be so, but the findings in the studies mentioned unquestionably indicate a biological cause also.

It's a shame however that so many people are fearful of responding honestly to questions about sexuality. I feel that if people could somehow overcome this fear that we'd see much, much higher prevalence of diverse sexualities, possibly well over 50%.

Just one other thing, when one looks at the instinct "attraction", it's not always sexual. We like who we like because of many reasons ranging from very minor to extreme. Sometimes we just like being in the company of certain people, they make us feel good, and other times we can be obsessed and madly in love.

The attraction continuum is like any other continuum, and I believe it's debatable that there is a point where simple attraction becomes a sexual attraction.

M Italiano, MBBS (AM) said...

The Xq28 hypothesis was orginally
proposed by William J Turner and not by Dean Hamer. Turner would always present his findings at conferences. In fact, Hamer asked Turner where Turner thought the locus was and asked if he could collaborate with Turner.
Later he "borrowed" Turner's idea (to put it politely) and didn't give credit to Turner.
I can now confidently state this, since the communications between Turner and Hamer are now available at the U New Mexico William J Turner collections. I was a research assistant to Turner
when he was emeritus at SUNY SB in the 1990's.
The point is, that Hamer in his studies of Xq28 did not address
trinucleotide repeats which was the basis for Turner's hypothesis.

M Italiano, MBBS (AM)

http://www.science20.com/profile/m_italiano_0