Two new studies point to intriguing connections between ear, brain and behavior. By far the stranger and more controversial work concerns a correlation between structure of the inner ear and sexual orientation among women. A team led by Dennis McFadden of the University of Texas studied weak, echo- like sounds produced in the inner ear. The researchers found that these sounds are more pronounced in the ears of heterosexual women than in those of homosexual or bisexual women. The sounds are stronger in general for women than for men, leading McFadden to suggest that high levels of androgen hormones in the womb may have "masculinized" both the hearing systems and the brain structures of bisexual and homosexual females. That interpretation is, needless to say, highly speculative. McFadden's report appears in the March 3, 1998 issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Meanwhile, Robert Zatorre of the Montreal Neurological Institute and his colleagues have gained a new understanding of the neurological basis of perfect pitch--the rare ability to identify a musical note almost by instinct. This report appears in the March 17 issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Looking at blood flow in the brain, Zatorre's group found that people with perfect pitch display unusual patterns of brain activity when listening to music. These people seem to have tonal references hard-wired into their brains; the rest of us have to call on our fallible on musical memories.