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Open Access 01-12-2013 | Research article

Immediate processing of erotic stimuli in paedophilia and controls: a case control study

Authors: Benedikt Habermeyer, Fabrizio Esposito, Nadja Händel, Patrick Lemoine, Markus Klarhöfer, Ralph Mager, Volker Dittmann, Erich Seifritz, Marc Graf

Published in: BMC Psychiatry | Issue 1/2013

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Abstract

Background

Most neuroimaging studies investigating sexual arousal in paedophilia used erotic pictures together with a blocked fMRI design and long stimulus presentation time. While this approach allows the detection of sexual arousal, it does not enable the assessment of the immediate processing of erotically salient stimuli. Our study aimed to identify neuronal networks related to the immediate processing of erotic stimuli in heterosexual male paedophiles and healthy age-matched controls.

Methods

We presented erotic pictures of prepubescent children and adults in an event related fMRI-design to eight paedophilic subjects and age-matched controls.

Results

Erotic pictures of females elicited more activation in the right temporal lobe, the right parietal lobe and both occipital lobes and erotic pictures of children activated the right dorsomedial prefrontal cortex in both groups. An interaction of sex, age and group was present in the right anteriolateral oribitofrontal cortex.

Conclusions

Our event related study design confirmed that erotic pictures activate some of the brain regions already known to be involved in the processing of erotic pictures when these are presented in blocks. In addition, it revealed that erotic pictures of prepubescent children activate brain regions critical for choosing response strategies in both groups, and that erotically salient stimuli selectively activate a brain region in paedophilic subjects that had previously been attributed to reward and punishment, and that had been shown to be implicated in the suppression of erotic response and deception.

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The pre-publication history for this paper can be accessed here:http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-244X/13/88/prepub

Title: Immediate processing of erotic stimuli in paedophilia and controls: a case control study
Authors: Benedikt Habermeyer
Fabrizio Esposito
Nadja Händel
Patrick Lemoine
Markus Klarhöfer
Ralph Mager
Volker Dittmann
Erich Seifritz
Marc Graf
Publication date: 01-12-2013
Publisher: BioMed Central
Published in: BMC Psychiatry / Issue 1/2013
Electronic ISSN: 1471-244X
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-244X-13-88

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