Abstract
BackgroundExisting brain imaging studies, investigating sexual arousal via the presentation of erotic pictures or film excerpts, have mainly used blocked designs with long stimulus presentation times.MethodsTo clarify how experimental functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) design affects stimulus-induced brain activity, we compared brief event-related presentation of erotic vs. neutral stimuli with blocked presentation in 10 male volunteers.ResultsBrain activation differed depending on design type in only 10% of the voxels showing task related brain activity. Differences between blocked and event-related stimulus presentation were found in occipitotemporal and temporal regions (Brodmann Area (BA) 19, 37, 48), parietal areas (BA 7, 40) and areas in the frontal lobe (BA 6, 44).ConclusionOur results suggest that event-related designs might be a potential alternative when the core interest is the detection of networks associated with immediate processing of erotic stimuli.Additionally, blocked, compared to event-related, stimulus presentation allows the emergence and detection of non-specific secondary processes, such as sustained attention, motor imagery and inhibition of sexual arousal.
Highlights
Existing brain imaging studies, investigating sexual arousal via the presentation of erotic pictures or film excerpts, have mainly used blocked designs with long stimulus presentation times
The mean levels of reported arousal assessed with the Self-Assessment Manikin (SAM) were 6.75 (± 1.71) for the erotic stimuli and 3.80 (± 0.94) for the neutral stimuli, respectively
Imaging data Blocked design Erotic stimuli – neutral stimuli The functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) Blood Oxygen Level Dependent (BOLD) response to erotic compared to neutral stimuli was significantly different (|T| > 4.77, pFDR < .05) in several brain regions
Summary
Existing brain imaging studies, investigating sexual arousal via the presentation of erotic pictures or film excerpts, have mainly used blocked designs with long stimulus presentation times. Redoute proposed a model of sexual behavior, which differentiates four different components: a cognitive, an emotional, a motivational, and a physiological one [1]. A growing number of studies have investigated brain processing of visual sexual stimuli with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) or Positron Emission Tomography (PET). These studies have found that erotic stimuli elicit activity in a widespread neural network, whose different parts have been associated with different components of Redoute's sexual behavior model [1,2]. High spatial resolution images acquired with 7 T fMRI even allow a clear functional distinction between adjacent subcortical structures such as the anterior caudate and mediodorsal thalamus [3]
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