Androgen Deprivation Alters Attention to Sexually Provocative Visual Stimuli in Elderly Men

Abstract

IntroductionTestosterone is known to regulate male sexual interest, but the exact way that androgens influence men's sexual cognition remains unclear.AimTo investigate the influence of androgen deprivation (AD) on visual responses to sexually suggestive stimuli in men treated for prostate cancer with AD therapy.MethodsPatients with AD-treated prostate cancer, patients with prostate cancer not on AD therapy, and age-matched healthy control participants were exposed to images of male and female runway models fully or minimally clothed. Eye tracking was used to compare looking behavior among groups.Main Outcome MeasuresProportion of fixations on fully clothed vs minimally clothed models and proportion of fixations on target areas of interest (ie, legs, chest, pelvis, and face) of fully clothed and minimally clothed models were analyzed and compared among groups.ResultsAlthough men not on AD exhibited a larger proportion of fixations on the minimally clothed compared with the fully clothed images, there was no difference between the 2 image types for men on AD. This was true regardless of whether the images depicted male or female models. Groups did not differ in their fixations to target areas of interest.ConclusionThese results suggest that testosterone can influence men’s visual attention to sexual stimuli; specifically, AD can attenuate the time spent fixated on sexualized targets.Palmer-Hague JL, Tsang V, Skead C, et al. Androgen Deprivation Alters Attention to Sexually Provocative Visual Stimuli in Elderly Men. Sex Med 2017;5:e245–e254.

Hormones and visual attention to sexual stimuli in older men: an exploratory investigation

“…This finding has direct implications to PCa patients, many of whom are on ADT, which suppresses their gonadal hormone titers to castrate levels and negatively affect their sexual function. Together with our previous research showing that men on ADT fail to exhibit the normal eugonadal bias toward sexy versus non-sexy images [26], our current findings provide additional evidence that men on ADT may fail to fixate preferentially on sexually relevant visual stimuli under certain conditions. Lack of attention to sexually relevant stimuli for men may translate into decreased sexual interest, reduced sexual activity, and eroding sexual relationships.…”

“…Although most of our participants were heterosexual, inclusion of both male and female models allowed us to assess whether any observed differences in viewing behavior were due to the sex of the visual targets. It is important to note, however, we found no effect of model sex on fixations on the images in our previous study [26].…”

“…To test whether gonadal hormone concentrations influenced visual attention to sexual stimuli, we took advantage of a pre-existing protocol that has been used to identify social influences on looking behavior in undergraduates [27,28], as well as elderly men with and without PCa [26]. We used a desktop eye-tracking system (RED, SMI, Teltow, Germany) to track eye movements while participants viewed images of male and female runway models on an integrated desktop computer monitor that inconspicuously housed external eye-tracking hardware along its bottom edge.…”

“…Previously, we showed that men on ADT failed to demonstrate the same bias toward preferential fixation on sexy compared to non-sexy images shown by both men with prostate cancer who were not receiving ADT as well as healthy men without PCa [26]. There we utilized an eye-tracking protocol where participants did not know their visual activity was being tracked.…”

Erotic appeals in advertising

“…Perception of erotic appeals influences gaze behaviour and could be affected by, e.g. ethnicity (Ganesan et al, 2020;Wang and Spark, 2014), implied social presence (Milani et al, 2019), the amount of testosterone in the case of men (Palmer-Hague et al, 2017) and sexual preferences in terms of sexual orientation (Vásquez-Amézquita et al, 2019). The time of looking at an erotic appeal may be defined as an indicator of "sex interest" (Morandini et al, 2019).…”