Scent and Sexuality

Kim du Toit is discussing new research into how people with different sexual preferences react to scent. The long and short of it is that the scientists monitored brain activity in straight men, straight women, and lesbians while they smelled male and female hormones. The straight men reacted to the female hormones. The straight women reacted to the male hormones. The lesbians didn't react to either one.

Like most research this raises a lot of questions like can this stimulus response be learned (most likely yes). The discussion over there is mostly about the political ramifications, but it also has some interesting analysis, like this one:

the brain loves to rewire, reorganize, and reprioritize. So studying it now may tell you nothing about what it looked like 5 or 10 years ago. THe fact that in lesbians neither smell actually gets to their sexual arousal center tells me that it sure as heck sounds like there’s a psychological block there preventing it from going there.

Things that go to your hypothalamus can only get there through the amygdala, which is the emotional center. If the amygdala doesn’t want to send it there, it’ll stay in the ‘scent area’.

So what they should do now is study things at the amygdalar and scent cortex level. Is it even getting to the amygdala (this would fit their theory) or is it getting to the amygdala but not moving on?

Thoughts?