Man claims stroke turned him gay

[madd0ct0r]

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/rugby-man-woke ... 36812.html

A 19-stone rugby player who suffered a stroke ditched his fiancee after claiming he woke up gay.

Chris Birch, 26, has since slimmed down to a lithe 11 stone, retrained as a hairdresser and moved in with a teenage boyfriend. He now works at J's Hair Salon in Ystrad Mynach, south Wales, after giving up his job in a bank.

The freak life-changing accident happened during a rugby training session when he attempted a back flip and broke his neck. His parents and girlfriend endured an anxious bedside vigil waiting to discover whether he would recover from the accident.

The man who eventually emerged was different in almost every way and found he hated sport and was no longer interested in women. Plans to get married and settle down were dropped as he embarked on a new life as an openly gay man.

"I was gay when I woke up and I still am," Mr Birch said, speaking from J' Hair Salon.

He has also detailed the life-changing impact of his stroke in a series of newspapers.

"It sounds strange but when I came round I immediately felt different. I wasn't interested in women any more," he is reported as saying.

"I had never been attracted to a man before - I'd never even had any gay friends. But I didn't care about who I was before, I had to be true to my feelings.

"Suddenly I hated everything about my old life. I didn't get on with my friends, I hated sport and found my job boring.

"I started to take more pride in my appearance, bleached my hair and started working out. I went from a 19-stone skinhead to an 11-stone preened man."

Initially I was sceptical - a stroke would be a good opportunity to 'come out', but looking at the scale of the lifestyle change...
could be an interesting case study. Sadly there's no 'before' MRI.

[mr friendly guy]

Why would a before MRI be useful? Its not like we can detect gayness on an MRI, and the difference between a pre and post stroke would be a white patch which turns up on the MRI.

[Lord of the Abyss]

Why would a before MRI be useful? Its not like we can detect gayness on an MRI, and the difference between a pre and post stroke would be a white patch which turns up on the MRI.

Well, seeing what the before and after images looked like might give us a clue where to start looking for differences between gay & straight brains that are identifiable by MRI.

[Serafina]

Why would a before MRI be useful? Its not like we can detect gayness on an MRI, and the difference between a pre and post stroke would be a white patch which turns up on the MRI.

Well, seeing what the before and after images looked like might give us a clue where to start looking for differences between gay & straight brains that are identifiable by MRI.

That's assuming that his claims are accurate in the first place.

[Lord of the Abyss]

Why would a before MRI be useful? Its not like we can detect gayness on an MRI, and the difference between a pre and post stroke would be a white patch which turns up on the MRI.

Well, seeing what the before and after images looked like might give us a clue where to start looking for differences between gay & straight brains that are identifiable by MRI.

That's assuming that his claims are accurate in the first place.

Well, of course.

[mr friendly guy]

Why would a before MRI be useful? Its not like we can detect gayness on an MRI, and the difference between a pre and post stroke would be a white patch which turns up on the MRI.

Well, seeing what the before and after images looked like might give us a clue where to start looking for differences between gay & straight brains that are identifiable by MRI.

The differences between a pre and post stroke on an MRI is simply a very obvious white patch which appears on the brain, and stands out against the darker black image which the machines colours the rest of the brain. This is representative of ischaemic changes to the brain. All the MRI would tell us is the anatomical region where the stroke affected. Which is what the MRI is actually used for clinically in stroke patients (+ to differentiate some other rarer syndromes, but that is neither here nor there).

If he is thinking of detecting function, rather than anatomy, various nuclear med scans such as SPECT are being researched as investigative tools. However since they are still research tools, we still don't know what exactly two different scans mean clinically.

Assuming the story is true, all the MRI would tell us is there area of the brain that is damaged, which might give us a clue to why some people are gay in the sense that you suspect the damage area might affect sexual orientation. In which case we don't really need the before stroke image to infer function, just as we didn't need to know what Phineas Gage's frontal lobe looked like before an accident led to a pipe being shoved through it, to be able to infer that the frontal lobe must affect behaviour because Gage's personality changed after. Now I suppose a prior MRI might be useful if you are postulating that some non damaged part of the brain alters itself in response to the stroke, and this alteration has caused the change in sexual orientation.

edited for clarity.

[Anguirus]

You know, I buy it. Strokes do all SORTS of weird stuff. I've heard of people waking up with an accent from a country that they've never visited, or speaking a language that they've barely studied. Sexual orientation is not totally fluid, obviously, but it's fluid enough so I think this might actually be possible.

I mean, obviously there is no hard evidence, just this guy's word, but you have to wonder what he's really *gaining* from lying. And if this sort of thing is possible in humans, increased acceptance of homosexuality in society makes it morel ikely to be reported now.

Obviously the following is all under the proviso that there's just not much to this article either way.

[Alyrium Denryle]

You know, I buy it. Strokes do all SORTS of weird stuff. I've heard of people waking up with an accent from a country that they've never visited, or speaking a language that they've barely studied. Sexual orientation is not totally fluid, obviously, but it's fluid enough so I think this might actually be possible.

I mean, obviously there is no hard evidence, just this guy's word, but you have to wonder what he's really *gaining* from lying. And if this sort of thing is possible in humans, increased acceptance of homosexuality in society makes it morel ikely to be reported now.

Obviously the following is all under the proviso that there's just not much to this article either way.

I do to, honestly. There have been documented cases of head injuries inducing changes in sexual orientation and when you consider what a stroke actually does--kill off large swaths of the brain--it is not exactly shocking that a stroke might alter the neural networks that process sexual stimulation, and affect personality.

[Silvertongue]

I do to, honestly. There have been documented cases of head injuries inducing changes in sexual orientation and when you consider what a stroke actually does--kill off large swaths of the brain--it is not exactly shocking that a stroke might alter the neural networks that process sexual stimulation, and affect personality.

I'm curious how common a stroke induced sexual orientation may be. Stokes are common, and behavior changes due to strokes are well documented. Sexual behavior changes due to stroke may be common, but are perhaps not well documented due to fear of shame, and unreliable self reporting.

Disclaimer Joke: We should find out how to create gay inducing strokes, and then we threaten terrorists, not with death, or mere incarceration, but with turning them into huge flaming homos,in a norwegan style prison, with lots of other men just like them. This would put fear into the eyes of everyone from Al-Qaeda, to the KKK.

[Alyrium Denryle]

I'm curious how common a stroke induced sexual orientation may be. Stokes are common, and behavior changes due to strokes are well documented. Sexual behavior changes due to stroke may be common, but are perhaps not well documented due to fear of shame, and unreliable self reporting.

Really really rare.

[Akhlut]

You know, I buy it. Strokes do all SORTS of weird stuff. I've heard of people waking up with an accent from a country that they've never visited,

Foreign accent syndrome is more that the areas that control the muscles and airway have been fouled up, and the sufferer ends up not being able to speak exactly as they did before. People just think it sounds like a foreign accent because humans make a lot of false positives with their pattern-finding.

[madd0ct0r]

I didn't know that a stroke affected area would should up on an MRI - i thought it was more a case of comparing before and after images to see where the pattern had changed.

But considering what Al said, that non-damaged parts of his brain might have rewired themselves to route around the damage, it makes sense, and so the damaged area may not affect sexual orientation at all.

[LaCroix]

[I'm curious how common a stroke induced sexual orientation may be. Stokes are common, and behavior changes due to strokes are well documented. Sexual behavior changes due to stroke may be common, but are perhaps not well documented due to fear of shame, and unreliable self reporting.

It might simply change that someone who was into blondes now has the hots for brunettes, or that a boob-man turned into a leg-man. Or that some prude is now kinky or the other way round, or whatever. Sexual orientation is an extremely fluid entity.

[Ahriman238]

Is it possible that this is psychological, rahter than physiological? He's not reacting to massive trauma, or even to other changes to himself caused by the stroke? Be nice to eliminate the possiblity.

[defanatic]

I don't find it unbelievable, but I wouldn't say I believe the report. Personality changes are not unheard of, but homosexuality isn't a "personality" thing, not in the traditional sense. It's an attraction thing, and part of development. So... More research is required.

[Tolya]

Why would a before MRI be useful? Its not like we can detect gayness on an MRI, and the difference between a pre and post stroke would be a white patch which turns up on the MRI.

I've once read an article which stated that brains of homosexuals function similarly to the opposite sex - i.e. a gay male would have similar brain function to a heterosexual female. Perhaps this could be a starting point.

[LaCroix]

Wouldn't that imply transsexualism, instead? (But then again, most transpeople I know about ended up being homosexuals after their change to their real sex.)

[Simon_Jester]

I don't think there's a consistent enough pattern of orientation in transsexuals to make it possible to say, one way or the other.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Wouldn't that imply transsexualism, instead? (But then again, most transpeople I know about ended up being homosexuals after their change to their real sex.)

It is a matter of what parts of the brain have incorrectly differentiated, and to what extent the overall brain has not correctly differentiated.

An fMRI though does not have a high enough resolution, you would need something that can take really high resolution anatomical scans of neural networks in the brain.

[Tinkerbell]

More likely than the stoke turning him gay:

The stroke making him realize how short life is and how important it is to live the life you want. Blaming the stoke seems to me to be a convenient way to "soften the blow" with his SO and any family he thought might not be supportive.