Asrai Collective ([info]asrai_d) wrote in [info]queerchoice,
@ 2007-04-11 15:43:00
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A link to another post about a news article
This is a link to another post in bipolypagangeek about a new article in the NY Times which states:
    "Desire between the sexes is not a matter of choice. Straight men, it seems, have neural circuits that prompt them to seek out women; gay         men have those prompting them to seek other men. Women’s brains may be organized to select men who seem likely to provide for them         and their children. The deal is sealed with other neural programs that induce a burst of romantic love, followed by long-term attachment."

Any way read it here

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[info]sapphorlando
2007-04-11 11:52 pm UTC (link)
Yet another attempt to force the vastly complex mystery of human attraction into neat, all-too-tidy compartments for easy social management.

Related: Is there really a "bipolypagangeek" community?

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[info]asrai_d
2007-04-12 03:23 pm UTC (link)
If you clicked the link it took you to a post in the community. So yes ...

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Brain circuits
(Anonymous)
2007-06-25 08:15 pm UTC (link)
Um, okay, this is obvious, but, I have brain circuits that enable me to ride a bicycle and program PHP and C++. Otherwise how could I do those things? The question is, how did you GET the brain circuits? I read a really interesting book called "Basic Instinct: The Genesis of Behavior" that describes experiments that show how even the most obviously biological behaviors, such as chicks imprinting on mama ducks or rats finding and drinking water when they're thirsty, depend on learning, sometimes prior to birth but usually right afterwards. (Which makes me think of all those studies "proving" innate gender roles that always have toddlers or sometimes even teenagers as the subjects-- um, 3 years is a long time for a little person to be absorbing the world! What makes you think they can learn the rudiments of a complex verbal language while not learning the surrounding gender roles? Especially when the gender roles are built right into the language-- e.g. "he" and "she" which tells every young'un how important gender (allegedly) is!)

Of course, the animals usually all end up doing the same thing, but that is because they all have the same experiences-- an example they gave is that young rats are drawn towards snuggling with other rats based on their smell. But when they put perfume all over the mother at birth, the rats raised that way preferred the perfume smell instead of the natural one. In other words, preferring rat smell isn't innate, but all rats do it since they like warmth and the first warm thing they smell is a rat! One side effect of this research is that they have improved their knowledge of animal "cultures," for example, songbirds of the same species do not always have the same song, it varies regionally just like human language does (except obviously the songs are simpler).

The book also has a good piece about the logical flaws in assuming that evolution will result in fixed "neural programs" for specific behaviors-- even with such things as drinking and parental attachment, it turns out that the behaviors are too complex to be coded directly in the genome. The Human Genome Project added a piece to this puzzle, since there turned out to be way fewer genes than people thought-- obviously development is based on more than just genes, not only including learning, but basic anatomical development is probably based on prenatal environment and the non-genetic portion of the egg as well.

D.

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