Patterns of Brain Activation during Visually Evoked Sexual Arousal Differ between Homosexual and Heterosexual Men

Hu, Sien; Wei, Ning; Wang, Qian‐qian; Yan, Leqin; Wei, Er-Qing; Zhang, M.-M.; Hu, Jianbo; Huang, Manli; Zhou, Weihua; Xu, Yi

doi:10.3174/ajnr.a1260

Cited by 71 publications

(52 citation statements)

References 43 publications

(43 reference statements)

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“…In homosexual men, the left angular gyrus, left caudate nucleus and right pallidum were activated. In contrast, heterosexual men showed activation of the bilateral lingual gyrus, right hippocampus and right parahippocampal gyrus (128). A further study extends these findings to cortical areas.…”

Section: Sexual Orientation and The Brainsupporting

confidence: 58%

Sexual differentiation of the human brain in relation to gender identity and sexual orientation

Savić

Garcı́a-Falgueras

Swaab

2010

Sex Differences in the Human Brain, Their Underpinnings and Implications

118

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SummaryDuring the intrauterine period the fetal brain develops in the male direction through a direct action of testosterone on the developing nerve cells, or in the female direction through the absence of this hormone surge. In this way, our gender identity (the conviction of belonging to the male or female gender) and sexual orientation are programmed into our brain structures when we are still in the womb. However, since sexual differentiation of the genitals takes place in the first two months of pregnancy and sexual differentiation of the brain starts in the second half of pregnancy, these two processes can be influenced independently, which may result in transsexuality. This also means that in the event of ambiguous sex at birth, the degree of masculinization of the genitals may not reflect the degree of masculinization of the brain. There is no proof that social environment after birth has an effect on gender identity or sexual orientation.KEY WORDS: gender identity, homosexuality, human brain, sexual orientation, sexual differentiation, transsexuality. Sexual organization and activation of the human brainThe process of sexual differentiation of the brain brings about permanent changes in brain structures and functions via interactions of the developing neurons with the environment, understood in its widest sense. The environment of a developing neuron is formed by the surrounding nerve cells and the child's circulating hormones, as well as the hormones, nutrients, medication and other chemical substances from the mother and the environment that enter the fetal circulation via the placenta. All these factors may have a lasting effect on the sexual differentiation of the brain. The testicles and ovaries develop in the sixth week of pregnancy. This occurs under the influence of a cascade of genes, starting with the sex-determining gene on the Y chromosome (SRY). The production of testosterone by a boy's testes is necessary for sexual differentiation of the sexual organs between weeks 6 and 12 of pregnancy. The peripheral conversion of testosterone into dihydrotestosterone is essential for the formation of a boy's penis, prostate and scrotum. Instead, the development of the female sexual organs in the womb is based primarily on the absence of androgens (1). Once the differentiation of the sexual organs into male or female is settled, the next thing that is differentiated is the brain, under the influence, mainly, of sex hormones on the developing brain cells. The changes (permanent) brought about in this stage have organizing effects; later, during puberty, the brain circuits that developed in the womb are activated by sex hormones. This paradigm of sexual differentiation of the brain has been well established, ever since the first paper by Phoenix et al. (2). The fetal brain is protected against the effect of circulating estrogens from the mother by the protein α-fetoprotein, which is produced by the fetus and binds strongly to estrogens but not to testosterone (3,4). However, estrogens do not only reach th...

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Section: Sexual Orientation and The Brainsupporting

confidence: 58%

Sexual differentiation of the human brain in relation to gender identity and sexual orientation

Savić

Garcı́a-Falgueras

Swaab

2010

Sex Differences in the Human Brain, Their Underpinnings and Implications

118

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“…In men, sexual stimulation with visual or olfactory cues produces activity in the cerebellar cortex [1,2], and similar responses in non-human primates are also found after stimulation with odors from receptive females [3]. In our laboratory, we found that sensory sexual stimulation of male rats produces the highest significant activation of granule cells at lobules 6 to 9 of the vermis region [4].…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 56%

Multiunit Recording of the Cerebellar Cortex, Inferior Olive, and Fastigial Nucleus During Copulation in Naive and Sexually Experienced Male Rats

et al. 2009

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Registro de acceso restringido Este recurso no está disponible en acceso abierto por política de la editorial. No obstante, se puede acceder al texto completo desde la Universitat Jaume I o si el usuario cuenta con suscripción. Registre d'accés restringit Aquest recurs no està disponible en accés obert per política de l'editorial. No obstant això, es pot accedir al text complet des de la Universitat Jaume I o si l'usuari compta amb subscripció. Restricted access item This item isn't open access because of publisher's policy. The full--text version is only available from Jaume I University or if the user has a running suscription to the publisher's contents.

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“…Both contrasts also revealed increased activity in a region of the precuneus that has been implicated in the attribution of emotions to the self and others (Ochsner et al, 2004), possibly indicating that emotional empathy was preferentially engaged by scenarios involving sexual disgust. The bilateral lingual and parahippocampal gyri activations observed in both of these contrasts have previously been associated with processing erotic stimuli (Hu et al, 2008). Finally, the activation of the fusiform gyrus by Disgust scenarios could reflect increased imageability for disgusting transgressions relative to other transgression types, as activity in the fusiform gyrus has been consistently associated with mental imagery (e.g., Ishai, Ungerleider, & Haxby, 2000).…”

Section: Disgustmentioning

confidence: 90%

Is Morality Unified? Evidence that Distinct Neural Systems Underlie Moral Judgments of Harm, Dishonesty, and Disgust

Parkinson

Sinnott‐Armstrong

Koralus³

et al. 2011

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience

135

108

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Much recent research has sought to uncover the neural basis of moral judgment. However, it has remained unclear whether "moral judgments" are sufficiently homogenous to be studied scientifically as a unified category. We tested this assumption by using fMRI to examine the neural correlates of moral judgments within three moral areas: (physical) harm, dishonesty, and (sexual) disgust. We found that the judgment of moral wrongness was subserved by distinct neural systems for each of the different moral areas and that these differences were much more robust than differences in wrongness judgments within a moral area. Dishonest, disgusting, and harmful moral transgression recruited networks of brain regions associated with mentalizing, affective processing, and action understanding, respectively. Dorsal medial pFC was the only region activated by all scenarios judged to be morally wrong in comparison with neutral scenarios. However, this region was also activated by dishonest and harmful scenarios judged not to be morally wrong, suggestive of a domain-general role that is neither peculiar to nor predictive of moral decisions. These results suggest that moral judgment is not a wholly unified faculty in the human brain, but rather, instantiated in dissociable neural systems that are engaged differentially depending on the type of transgression being judged.

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Patterns of Brain Activation during Visually Evoked Sexual Arousal Differ between Homosexual and Heterosexual Men

Cited by 71 publications

References 43 publications

Sexual differentiation of the human brain in relation to gender identity and sexual orientation

Sexual differentiation of the human brain in relation to gender identity and sexual orientation

Multiunit Recording of the Cerebellar Cortex, Inferior Olive, and Fastigial Nucleus During Copulation in Naive and Sexually Experienced Male Rats

Is Morality Unified? Evidence that Distinct Neural Systems Underlie Moral Judgments of Harm, Dishonesty, and Disgust

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