Queer Brain

by Jessica Wakeman

Attention, all ye who bemoan the nefarious “gay lifestyle”! A new study this week from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, shows the brain activity of straight men and lesbians, as well as gay men and women, are more similar to each other than to their same-gendered peers. In other words, Will and Grace may have had more in common than a weakness for hot men.

National Geographic reports that researchers studied 90 men and women of all sexual orientations and followed blood flow in the brain to map the cerebral network. They discovered that for homosexuals, brain activity in the amygdala, which is responsible for emotions, most closely resembles the activity in a straight member of the opposite sex. Even the volume of the right hemisphere of the brain is similar! (Perhaps leaving the really hard sleuthing to US Weekly, the study didn’t mention bisexuals, like maybe-couple Lindsay Lohan and Samantha Ronson.)

So what does this all mean? The leader of the study suggests it’ll challenge the idea that being gay is a “learned behavior,” a dangerous concept suggesting gayness can be undone with mounds of scary de-gayification therapy. This study is in the news about same-sex couples — and that makes for a very good week indeed.