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Link Is Cited Between Smell and Sexuality

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By NICHOLAS BAKALAR
Published: May 16, 2006

Lesbians react to the smell of certain bodily odors in ways similar to heterosexual men and different from heterosexual women, new research suggests.

Building on their previous studies that showed significant differences in the ways heterosexual and homosexual men's brains process odors, the researchers may be narrowing the search for the elusive human pheromone.

The existence of pheromones, the sex-specific chemicals that send messages by smell to other members of the species, is well known in animals, but their existence among humans is in dispute.

The authors do not claim that they have discovered human pheromones or even that odors are a major factor in human sexual choices. But they have found suggestive differences in physiological responses to odor. The study appeared online on May 8 in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The substances involved are a progesterone derivative produced in male sweat and an estrogenlike steroid that has been detected in female urine. The two smells are processed in the brain differently from ordinary odors.

In the experiment, 12 lesbians smelled the two substances while researchers observed blood flow in their brains with PET scans. The scents activated parts of the brain that ordinarily process odors, but the estrogenlike compound also activated a part of the hypothalamus, as it does in heterosexual men.

Animal studies suggest that the hypothalamus is important in sexual behavior. So when that part of the brain lights up under the stimulus of an odor, a sexual response, rather than simply an olfactory one, is implied.

In previous research, Dr. Ivanka Savic and her colleagues established that brain responses to these odors were reciprocal in heterosexual men and women. Heterosexual women responded to the male sweat odor in the hypothalamus rather than in the olfactory portions of the brain, and heterosexual men responded to female estrogen in the hypothalamus. Homosexual men processed the smells in the same way as heterosexual women.

Despite the similarities, lesbians do not respond to these two odors in exactly the same way as heterosexual men, so the analogy with gay men and heterosexual women is imperfect. "This observation could favor the view that male and female homosexuality are different," said Dr. Savic, an associate professor of neurology at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.

The scents are not aphrodisiacs. No subjects reported sexual arousal during the experiment. The researchers also emphasize that their findings have no clinical application. "It is very important to make clear that the study has no implications for possible dynamics in sexual orientation," Dr. Savic said.

Neat Stuff 3nodding

Dude... then al the old queers would be "Damn you kids! When we were young we had to figure out if we were gay or not on our own!"

It was intended to be.