There’s all sorts of evidence out there that brain injury can cause major physical problems and change your personality.
But what about sexuality? A young man from the UK is claiming a freak stroke turned him gay.
The article does say near the bottom that the man was tested by a neurological specialist and scored in both gay and heterosexual areas.
It begs the question of whether this man was already on the spectrum and the injury just exacerbated that side of his personality.
What do you think Splatters? Is this evidence of biology predetermining sexuality? What else might we see changed with brain injury?
I have heard of cases where someone has a brain injury and wakes up talking and thinking in a completely different language. One which they’ve never formally learned.
My brother had a brain injury when his car was obliterated by a drunk driver many years ago. When he woke up from his coma, he was completely fine except he couldn’t remember how to count past 20 or how to tell the time. But those two things were simple for him to relearn and he’s been fine ever since.
I can believe that messing with the brain could have such an effect.
I have heard of instances where brain injuries or disorders have led to a person’s tastes in food changing. Flavours that they previously loved no longer tasted the same to them.
A part of me does wonder if maybe this person found a way to come out that was easier for their parents to accept.
The association of ‘brain damage’ and being gay is one that makes me cringe. Can see the haters jumping on that bandwagon.
I agree – but I think the haters will find a way to jump on it anyway.
On the plus side, if a biological change (either biological or through injury) can alter a person’s sexual preference, it does logically suggest that sexuality preference isn’t a matter of choice but of biology.
But, the cynic in me says that someone is going to use this as proof that they can develop a treatment to “cure” people of being gay.
Yes, the churches will want it so it can be ‘cured’ and the shysters will want it for the money to be made.
Yes! You just know there is a section of the readership thinking, ooh, all we have to do is ‘fix’ the brain and we will get rid of homosexuality.
I know whose brains I’d like to fix.
Plenty of people have been trying to take the gay away using physical treatments (some of the most sophisticated of which use medication to alter brain chemistry as well as aversion treatments), this won’t be new this will just be much more hideous.
First step neurological link found for gay-ness, second step lobotomy/ gay zone removal.
Gay zone removal? They take away their Kylie cds??
and hot pants
That’s easy to do, Beccaann – too much holiday food has removed my own butt’s ability to wear hot pants.
‘Gay Zone Removal’ conjures up hilarious images of the Westboro Baptist Church lobbying outside nightclubs, fashion festivals and in boats off the islands of Mykonos and Lesbos…
haha yeah
I’d like to see that though a whole bunch of bigots having to deal with actual, alive and proud gay people rather than the grieving families of young men and women killed in service, it would be a much fairer “fight”.
My grandfather had cognitive function issues after a brain injury, the biggest thing was that he couldn’t understand that he wasn’t understanding. He felt fine therefore he was fine.
He had absolutely no realisation of his own frailty or limitations (especially as the brain injury was sustained in a car accident), and thought he was Superman (not literally, but that he could do anything he wanted to do with no consequences or difficulties). He also couldn’t recognise the presence of people he wasn’t actively interacting with – so would try to convince us to let him out of the locked ward while the nurse wasn’t looking, completely forgetting/unaware she was standing behind him and that he had spoken to her only seconds beforehand.
The biggest thing though was becoming more violent. If it was already part of his personality, we had not seen it before, but we don’t really know if it was a personality change or he had just lost the self-control/self-inhibitions that we all use to control our behaviour. Either way, Mum felt threatened enough by him waving his walking stick around that she had to leave.
So I guess that also has some bearing on the topic, as you say Smoph, was it a personality change or just a removal of the self-inhibitions that we use (should use in some cases!) to control our own behaviour? The more we learn about the brain, the more we realise we don’t know.
Some functions of specific areas of the brain are known, so it can be said injury to that area may affect X functions, but many others are not.
Personally I believe sexuality is biological, that it is in our genes along with everything else, but proving it is going to take a long time. Unfortunately cases like this don’t actually help in proving it either…
That is an interesting question. I have heard (anecdotally, I haven’t looked it up) of Alzheimer’s sufferers going both ways. That is, previously non-violent people becoming violent and previously violent people becoming non violent. I actually heard of a marriage (I have met the people, but this info was from the daughter) where the two swapped positions in that regard – he became placid and she became violent. This wasn’t an immediately observable thing as his condition followed a few years after hers.
POST FLASHBACK!
Earlier in the week we talked about the dangers of walking while texting etc.
Yesterday on the way to work I noticed a man walking in the wrong direction -that is, mine; he was walking with his back to the traffic. And with his head down. concentrating on something. As I got near him he reached a parked car. So, naturally, he gave it a wide berth, putting him well into the only remaining lane. The one I, and many other cars, were driving in.
As I had to slow down to avoid killing him I had a chance to notice what he was doing. He was concentrating on either a phone or an MP3 player. Either way, he had earphones in both ears, his head down looking at the gizmo, and his back to the traffic.
He could neither see nor hear impending danger and he blithely moved out into the traffic lane!
If these people are so keen to improve the gene pool by removing themselves from it I wish they would find a way that doesn’t impact on the rest of us.
I’m leaning toward this theory, myself — it sounds like the man in question had previously learned to inhibit homosexual leanings (one way or another), and the stroke removed some of that learned inhibition, moving him closer to the middle of the Kinsey scale. He probably also lost a number of associations with his fiancee, hobbies, etc. which reduced his desire to cling to that past life — he just couldn’t care.
That was the interesting part I thought. It would have to be there to start.
As many of you know, my big brother had a massive ABI (Acquired Brain Injury) just over two years ago. His was all frontal damage, even had to have some removed that was so badly damaged. He was hugely bloody lucky. Insanely so. He can still walk and talk and has ok cognitive function. However he struglles to follow processes that were second nature before, his balance is affected and he will always have seizures. He had a mountain of inhibition control issues in rehab that I am sure will affect him day to day. Usually of a sexually inappropriate nature. One time he even asked me to show him my tits. Told him if he didnt already HAVE a brain injury, I’d give him one!
However he used to be a chef. His knife skills were still excellent. He had some sexually ambigious leanings previously, but was now identifying as very straight.
I’m a huge believer in the enormous ability of the brain to heal itself. I guess, giving this some consideration and the above examples of people waking knowing different languages and having different accents, it makes sense that people could change in many ways and that could also encompass sexuality. It would be almost impossible to say overall one way or the other, as watching the many people in rehab with my brother and the different ways they healed (or didn’t) was fascinating in its diversity.
Just wish it had healed his addiction to alcohol.
When you suffer a brain injury, even a relatively mild one, the difference is not just the physical area of brain that gets changed. The impact is also psychological. While stroke victims and people who have degenerative disorders have little or no control over the impact of the physical changes there will be some psychological changes that are inevitable while the person tries to adjust to their changed reality. I would guess especially so in young people whose impairment is less severe and who are likely to be more self aware.
To believe otherwise would be like saying a person who survives breast cancer only comes out of it with a scar or a missing breast. Illness of any kind can shape your view of yourself and a reminder of your mortality is a pretty big wake up call when it comes to living in a way that is true to yourself, maybe that is part of what happened here.
Also that this young man is so keen to claim that it was a stroke that “changed” him probably says a lot about the young man and our society as much as it shows us anything about stroke or the biological/ neurological basis for homosexuality.
I hope that the information learned from this is put to go use though and society gets a more conclusive proof that being gay is not a simple, defiant lifestyle choice made by people who want to hurt the baby Jesus’ feelings.
On an unrelated note any one got a birthday coming up???
Here are some cards for you, pick yourself something nice. I quite like the dolphin one.
http://theoatmeal.com/horrible3
I’d like the Blizzard one on Page 1 thank you.
Woodchipper
Gatling panda
I tend to think the inhibition theory is pretty sturdy. I have my doubts about brain injury changing one’s sexual preference although I do know cases of individuals who have lost their ability to understand sexual appropriateness.
I personally know an elderly couple who have changed roles. He was the bully in the relationship for 50 years or so but since he developed alzheimer’s, she has become a crazy controlling maniac.
Suffice to say, we have so much to learn.