Research carried out in Northern Ireland into the needs of young LGBT people in 2003 revealed that the average age for men to realise their sexual orientation was 12, yet the average age they actually confided in someone was 17. You, like many lesbian, gay and bisexual people, may have hidden your sexual orientation for a long time. Some LGB people suffer from mental distress as a result.Ī general sense of personal worth and also a positive view of your sexual orientation are critical for your mental health. Hearing and seeing negative depictions of LGB people can lead us to internalise, or take in, these negative messages. Journal reference: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.Internalised homophobia and oppression happens to gay, lesbian and bisexual people, and even heterosexuals, who have learned and been taught that heterosexuality is the norm and “correct way to be”. “Paradoxically, it’s more informative to look at things that have no direct connection with sexual orientation, and that’s where this study scores,” says Simon LeVay, a prominent US author who in 1991 reported finding differences (pdf) in a part of the brain called the hypothalamus between straight and gay men.īut as Savic herself acknowledges, the study can’t say whether the brain differences are inherited, or result from abnormally high or low exposure in the womb to sex hormones such as testosterone. “The connectivity differences reported in the amygdala are striking.” “This study demonstrates that homosexuals of both sexes show strong cross-sex shifts in brain symmetry,” says Qazi Rahman, a leading researcher on sexual orientation at Queen Mary college, University of London, UK. “It’s a more action-related response than in women,” says Savic. In straight men and lesbians, the amygdala fed its signals mainly into the sensorimotor cortex and the striatum, regions of the brain that trigger the “fight or flight” response. Gay men have higher rates of depression too, she says, but it’s difficult to know whether this is down to biology, homophobia or simply feelings of being “different”. This is significant, she says, and fits with data showing that women are three times as likely as men to suffer from mood disorders or depression. “The regions involved in phobia, anxiety and depression overlap with the pattern we see from the amygdala,” says Savic. In straight women and gay men, the connections were mainly into regions of the brain that manifest fear as intense anxiety.
They found that the patterns of connectivity in gay men matched those of straight women, and vice versa (see image, above right). The images revealed how the amygdala connected to other parts of the brain, giving clues to how this might influence behaviour. The team next used PET scans to measure blood flow to the amygdala, part of the brain that governs fear and aggression. Gay men, meanwhile, had symmetrical brains like those of straight women. The results showed that straight men had asymmetric brains, with the right hemisphere slightly larger – and the gay women also had this asymmetry.
“That was the whole point of the study, to show parameters that differ, but which couldn’t be altered by learning or cognitive processes,” says Savic.įirst they used MRI scans to find out the overall volume and shapes of brains in a group of 90 volunteers consisting of 25 heterosexuals and 20 homosexuals of each gender.