The bisexual brain has its own characteristics

The human brain contains many features that have to do with the behavior patterns of different types of people. Somehow, the way in which the neurons in our brain fire and communicate with each other reflects the propensities and tendencies that are reflected in our way of acting. and yes this It is also true in the case of different sexual orientations.

Thus, the brains of heterosexual and homosexual people show some differences in the way they function in certain contexts, for example.

However, the brains of bisexual people (who are attracted to men and women, although not necessarily with the same frequency or intensity) do not show a mixture of the activation patterns of the other two, as one might think. According to a recent investigation whose results have been published in the magazine , bisexuality is associated with its own neurobiological characteristics that are qualitatively different from those of homosexuals and heterosexuals.

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The brain in bisexuality

The study in question, led by psychologists and psychiatrists from Northwestern University and the University of Magdeburg, has shown that the brains of bisexual people present some characteristics in their functioning that, under certain conditions, distinguishes them from the rest of the population.

This difference, however, does not have to be evident in any situation, such as sleeping or solving a mathematical problem. In the context in which its existence has been verified is in the perception of sexually charged images. This is important, since a difference in brain activation patterns shows that the brain is physically different to others. In neurosciences, there is no distinction between software and hardware: the way in which the different parts of the brain shows us how the networks of neurons from which they are connected are woven together. made.

How was the research carried out?

For this research, almost 80 people participated: 28 bisexuals, 26 heterosexuals and 28 homosexuals. All of these individuals were between the ages of 25 and 50 and of different ethnicities and origins, so that the sample included different cultural variables. In addition, in the case of bisexual people, it was a requirement to participate that they had had at least one lover of each sex.

On the other hand, the sexual orientation of each person was recorded from a questionnaire based on the kinsey scale, which established a scale that goes from exclusively homosexual to exclusively heterosexual, passing through some intermediate degrees.

From that point, each of the participants watched a series of videos with adult content in which both heterosexual and homosexual sex scenes appeared. During this phase, the researchers were monitoring the brain activation patterns of the participants through the use of magnetic resonance imaging.

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The most activated parts of the brain in bisexual people

The results of the research showed a curious pattern of neural activation that depended on the sexual orientation of each participant. Specifically, the firing patterns of a part of the brain linked to the basal gangliacalled the striated nucleus, specifically it is its lower or ventral part. This area of ​​the striatum is related to the mental processes of motivation and the search for pleasure, so it also has an important role in the experimentation of sexuality.

As expected, this area responded by showing a preference for the images in which the opposite sex, in heterosexuals, and in people of the same sex, in the case of people homosexuals. In the case of bisexuals, however, this area of ​​the brain (and secondarily, some others) behaved as if the differentiation between the category "man" and "woman" was not important; Somehow, the border between these two concepts was blurred, in the same way that little importance can be given to the color of the eyes of others.

Of course, the reactions of pure bisexuality, understood as one in which there is no clear preference for men or women, were rare. Judging by the images obtained through the brain scans, generally the activation of the brain regions of the bisexuals showed a tendency to find one of the two sexes more attractive.

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