Tuesday’s episode of CBS’s syndicated day-time talk show The Doctors asked “Can Stroke Change One’s Sexuality” and featured the story of rugby player Chris Birch, who after suffering a stroke during a freak training accident, broke his engagement to his girlfriend and claimed he had become gay. “It was a gradual process, it happened over about two years” Birch told the doctors. “It actually moved from me thinking that man is attractive without being attracted to him, to being that man is attractive too.” “I had a complete personality change.”
The show’s expert neurosurgeon, Dr. Neil Martin confirmed that a stroke can change the brain’s structure and that in rare cases patients can become “hypersexual” or even experience a “change in sexual orientation.” Pointing to MRI scans of the male and female brains, Martin explained that “in the male brain, this area the amiglia is barely connected to the opposite hemisphere. In the female brain, the amiglia is connected to multiple areas throughout the cerebral hemisphere — — women are just more connected than men are.” The brains of gay men, it turns out, closely resemble those of the heterosexual female. Watch it:
“This is just one piece of evidence that suggests that the difference here is not some social personal preference. The difference is a fundamental biological issue between individuals who are gay and who are straight,” Martin concluded.