Serotonin May Affect Sexual Preference.-New Study.

Serotonin is a brain chemical long known to affect the sex drive in humans. One of the latest conclusions that scientists  Yan Liu and Yun’ai Jiang from the Natural Institute of Biology in Beijing have  reached in their study, just released, however refers to the fact that serotonin levels may affect sexual orientation, well in mice anyway.

Serotonin, which is an essential neurotransmitter, can affect the sexual behavior. Male mice that were deprived of serotonin sniffed the love scent of males and females equally and sang beautiful mating songs to both. Apart from that they had an equal mounting preference, getting funky with males and females equally.

Serotonin is a substance present in the brain, the blood and the gastro-intestinal canal, and has a major role in neurotransmission, as well as in muscular contraction and the dilation of blood vessels.

By removing the Lmxb1 gene consisting of tryptophan and then observed the mice’s behavior, mice with low serotonin levels lost their higher preference for females and tried to mate with other males as well. The moment the serotonin levels were brought back to normal, the mice’s preference for females “reactivated”.

The researchers say that this is the first time a link between a neurotransmitter and sexual preferences in mammals has been found. However, they cannot draw any conclusive findings as yet  for human subjects, as it is not clear yet if men with low serotonin levels also have homosexual tendencies.

Studies conducted so far in human males show that low serotonin levels tend to mean less aggressiveness, impulsiveness and sexual desire. Zhou-Feng Chen of Washington University in St. Louis and co-author of the study explains that nobody thought that serotonin could be involved in this kind of sexual preference. One has to be cautious because this is work done in mice which are different to humans. He asserts one should be extremely careful to extrapolate these results into humans.

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