According to a study carried out by a team of psychiatrists and psychologists from the University of Magdeburg (Germany) and Northwestern University (USA), the brains of bisexuals (those people who are attracted to men and women equally ) has a very specific brain activity that is distinguished from that of the brains of homosexuals and heterosexuals.
The experts included the participation of 26 heterosexuals, 25 homosexuals and 28 bisexuals with ages between 25 and 50 years and with different ethnic groups: Caucasian, Hispanic, African American, Asian American and with diverse origins. The bisexual volunteers had had at least two sexual partners and a lover of each sex, an essential requirement to be part of the experiment. The sexual orientation of the volunteers was defined using a questionnaire (from exclusively heterosexual to exclusively homosexual) based on the Kinsey scale.
Throughout the experiment, the participants watched videos with sexually explicit images, in which both men and women appeared naked and practicing certain sexual patterns: men with women, women with women, and men with men. While watching these videos, the scientists tracked their brain activity using magnetic resonance imaging.
The results showed that the pattern of brain activity was uneven according to sexual orientation. Thus, the area of the brain related to erotic experiences and gratification, the Ventral striatum, was the region in which the changes were most evident.
This is the first time that coherent neuronal reactions related to bisexuals have been established, since the researchers expose that the brain of bisexuals appears as less discriminatory compared to that of homosexuals and heterosexuals, although the brain scan did determine that there was a certain inclination or preference of one sex over another.
The study has been published in Nature’s Scientific Reports journal.
