Male sexuality and aggression

[Negator]

How much of male sexuality is tied into aggression biologically? Perhaps this why conflict of the sexes is biological.

Aggression in men may be due to variations in one of two genes involved in the activity of the neurotransmitter serotonin, according to results of a study reported at the 6th International Congress of Neuroendocrinology (ICN 2006), which takes place June 19 – 22 at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center in downtown Pittsburgh.

What pushes some men to the outer limits of machismo, to be more confrontational or apt to get into scuffles and arguments? According to results of a study involving 531 white men of European descent, belligerence may be attributable to variations in one of two genes involved in the activity of the neurotransmitter serotonin. However, men with the “aggression” genes aren’t necessarily all cads, cautions Stephen Manuck, Ph.D., professor of psychology at the University of Pittsburgh, who led the research. Genetics appears to be predictive of aggression only if men also have more cynical and hostile attitudes toward others or fathers who never completed high school.

The Pitt study is the first to look at whether aggression in “normal” men may, in part, be attributed to the same serotonin-related genetic alterations that have been associated with aggressive behaviors in certain psychiatric and criminal populations. Indeed, the study found those who reported past fights, conflicts with authority figures or breaking objects in bouts of anger were more likely to carry the “low activity” MAOA gene variant that’s been linked to criminal violence.

Monoamine oxidase-A, or MAOA, is an enzyme that inactivates serotonin, helping to keep its levels in proper balance. Yet the low activity MAOA gene was only associated with aggressive “acting out” among men with oppositional attitudes. Variation in another serotonin gene, the serotonin 2A receptor, which is necessary for the neurotransmitter to act, also was predictive of antagonistic behavior, but only among men whose fathers had less than a high-school education. The same gene has been implicated in personality and anti-social disorders and in some criminal offenders.

sciencedaily.com/releases/20 … 162228.htm

Philadelphia, PA – There is a sound neurological basis for the cliché that men are more aggressive than women, according to new findings by scientists at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. Using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans, the Penn scientists illustrated for the first time that the relative size of the sections of the brain known to constrain aggression and monitor behavior is larger in women than in men

The research, by Ruben C. Gur, PhD, and Raquel E. Gur, MD, PhD, and their colleagues in Penn’s Department of Psychiatry and the Department of Epidemiology, is published in the recent issue of the Journal of the Cerebral Cortex.

The findings provide a new research path for therapies that may eventually help psychiatric patients control inappropriate aggression and dangerous patterns of impulsive behavior. They also bolster previous work by the Gurs demonstrating that although some gender differences develop as result of adaptive patterns of socialization, other distinctions are biologically based and probably innate.

“As scientists become more capable of mapping the functions of activity in various parts of the brain, we are discovering a variety of differences in the way men and women’s brains are structured and how they operate,” said Ruben Gur, first author of the study.

“Perhaps the most salient emotional difference between men and women, dwarfing all other differences, is aggression,” he said. “This study affords us neurobiological evidence that women may have a better brain capacity than men for actually ‘censoring’ their aggressive and anger responses.”

In the Gurs’ work, they relied on established scientific findings that human emotions are stimulated and regulated through a network that extends through much of the limbic system at the base of the brain (the region encompassing the amygdala, hypothalamus and mesocorticolimbic dopamine systems), and then upward and forward into the region around the eyes and forehead (the orbital and dorsolateral frontal area), and under the temples (the parietal and temporal cortex).

The amygdala is involved in emotional behavior related to arousal and excitement, while the orbital frontal region is involved in the modulation of aggression.

The Gurs’ study measured the ratio of orbital to amygdala volume in a sample of 116 right-handed, healthy adults younger than 50 years of age; 57 subjects were male and 59 were female. Once the scientists adjusted their measurements to allow for the difference between men and women in physical size, they found that the women’s brains had a significantly higher volume of orbital frontal cortex in proportion to amygdala volume than did the brains of the men.

“Because men and women differ in the way they process the emotions associated with perception, experience, expression, and most particularly in aggression, our belief is that the proportional difference in size in the region of the brain that governs behavior, compared to the region related to impulsiveness, may be a major factor in determining what is often considered ‘gendered-related’ behavior,” Raquel Gur said.

Others Penn investigators participating in the study were Faith Gunning-Dixon, PhD, and Warren B. Bilker, PhD, of the Department of Epidemiology.

The study was funded by a grant from the National Institutes of Health.

sciencedaily.com/releases/20 … 063105.htm

[Cyrene]

Most if not all male aggression is connected to male sexuality, but its not often a direct link. Male sexuality, like any mammal sexuality effects aggression, humans don’t take a leave out of the mammal group just because we’re smart. As in, in species of wolf where they are monogamous, male/female aggression is roughly the same, in species where things are remotely polygynous then male/female aggression aren’t.

In any species where the male can increase its reproductive fitness by sleeping around male aggression in the species tends to skyrocket.

Human aggression is connected to sexuality but in more elaborate ways than just a byproduct of the chemicals which create sexuality. For example, one of the largest types of murder is ‘altercation stemming from trivial origin’ or ie: status dispute between men that leads to homicide, thats a result of an evolutionary history of status competition among men for things like resources, and women are just another reproductive resource. For example, a massive amount of these people commiting these murders AND the victims of such murders, are unemployed and unmarried men.

So yeah, sexuality and aggression even sexuality and specific types of aggression are connected in deep deep ways that most people aren’t inclined to think about.

[MagsJ (..a chic geek -all thoughts are my own-)]

I’m not averse to a bit of male aggression… but only with the guy i’m dating, of course.

…and I don’t mean being slapped around