INVESTIGATIONS

Next generation

Howard Moltz, professor emeritus in Psychology, looks at brain scans showing for the first time that sexual orientation may be hardwired. Using positron emission tomography (PET), Moltz and his team monitored the hypothalamus—the brain’s sex center—in eight exclusively heterosexual males and eight exclusively homosexual males. The subjects were given a generic form of Prozac to raise their serotonin levels, associated with arousal. Straight men responded more to the drug than gays, pointing to a neurochemical difference. Leann Kinnunen, AM‘95, PhD’01, presented the results November 12 at the annual Society for Neuroscience conference in New Orleans. Moltz plans to run a similar study with straight women and lesbians.—M.L.

Photo by Dan Dry