scholarly journals Accurate sex classification from neural responses to sexual stimuli

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vesa Juhani Putkinen ◽  
Sanaz Nazari-Farsani ◽  
Tomi Karjalainen ◽  
Severi Santavirta ◽  
Matthew Hudson ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Sex Differences ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Activity Patterns ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Sexual Stimuli ◽  
Dorsal Attention Network ◽  
Film Clips ◽  
Attentional Engagement ◽  
Visual Sexual Stimuli ◽  
Multivariate Pattern

Sex differences in brain activity evoked by sexual stimuli remain elusive despite robust evidence for stronger enjoyment of and interest towards sexual stimuli in men than in women. To test whether visual sexual stimuli evoke different brain activity patterns in men and women, we measured haemodynamic brain activity induced by visual sexual stimuli in two experiments in 91 subjects (46 males). In one experiment, the subjects viewed sexual and non-sexual film clips and dynamic annotations for nudity in the clips was used to predict their hemodynamic activity. In the second experiment, the subjects viewed sexual and non-sexual pictures in an event-related design. Males showed stronger activation than females in the visual and prefrontal cortices and dorsal attention network in both experiments. Furthermore, using multivariate pattern classification we could accurately predict the sex of the subject on the basis of the brain activity elicited by the sexual stimuli. The classification generalized across the experiments indicating that the sex differences were consistent across the experiments. Eye tracking data obtained from an independent sample of subjects (N = 110) showed that men looked longer than women at the chest area of the nude female actors in the film clips. These results indicate that visual sexual stimuli evoke discernible brain activity patterns in men and women which may reflect stronger attentional engagement with sexual stimuli in men than women.

scholarly journals Neural substrates of sexual arousal are not sex dependent

2019 ◽  
Vol 116 (31) ◽  
pp. 15671-15676 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ekaterina Mitricheva ◽  
Rui Kimura ◽  
Nikos K. Logothetis ◽  
Hamid R. Noori
Keyword(s):  
Sex Differences ◽  
Sexual Orientation ◽  
Sexual Arousal ◽  
Visual Stimuli ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Neural Basis ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Biological Sex ◽  
Sexual Stimuli ◽  
Visual Sexual Stimuli

Sexual arousal is a dynamical, highly coordinated neurophysiological process that is often induced by visual stimuli. Numerous studies have proposed that the cognitive processing stage of responding to sexual stimuli is the first stage, in which sex differences occur, and the divergence between men and women has been attributed to differences in the concerted activity of neural networks. The present comprehensive metaanalysis challenges this hypothesis and provides robust quantitative evidence that the neuronal circuitries activated by visual sexual stimuli are independent of biological sex. Sixty-one functional magnetic resonance imaging studies (1,850 individuals) that presented erotic visual stimuli to men and women of different sexual orientation were identified. Coordinate-based activation likelihood estimation was used to conduct metaanalyses. Sensitivity and clustering analyses of averaged neuronal response patterns were performed to investigate robustness of the findings. In contrast to neutral stimuli, sexual pictures and videos induce significant activations in brain regions, including insula, middle occipital, anterior cingulate and fusiform gyrus, amygdala, striatum, pulvinar, and substantia nigra. Cluster analysis suggests stimulus type as the most, and biological sex as the least, predictor for classification. Contrast analysis further shows no significant sex-specific differences within groups. Systematic review of sex differences in gray matter volume of brain regions associated with sexual arousal (3,723 adults) did not show any causal relationship between structural features and functional response to visual sexual stimuli. The neural basis of sexual arousal in humans is associated with sexual orientation yet, contrary to the widely accepted view, is not different between women and men.

Men and women differ in amygdala response to visual sexual stimuli

2004 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 411-416 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephan Hamann ◽  
Rebecca A Herman ◽  
Carla L Nolan ◽  
Kim Wallen
Keyword(s):  
Men And Women ◽  
Sexual Stimuli ◽  
Amygdala Response ◽  
Visual Sexual Stimuli

scholarly journals Decoding Music-Evoked Emotions in the Auditory and Motor Cortex

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vesa Putkinen ◽  
Sanaz Nazari-Farsani ◽  
Kerttu Seppälä ◽  
Tomi Karjalainen ◽  
Lihua Sun ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Auditory Processing ◽  
Instrumental Music ◽  
Emotional Processing ◽  
Subjective Experience ◽  
Neural Circuits ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Neural Basis ◽  
Film Clips ◽  
Cortical Regions ◽  
Multivariate Pattern

Abstract Music can induce strong subjective experience of emotions, but it is debated whether these responses engage the same neural circuits as emotions elicited by biologically significant events. We examined the functional neural basis of music-induced emotions in a large sample (n = 102) of subjects who listened to emotionally engaging (happy, sad, fearful, and tender) pieces of instrumental music while their hemodynamic brain activity was measured with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Ratings of the four categorical emotions and liking were used to predict hemodynamic responses in general linear model (GLM) analysis of the fMRI data. Multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA) was used to reveal discrete neural signatures of the four categories of music-induced emotions. To map neural circuits governing non-musical emotions, the subjects were scanned while viewing short emotionally evocative film clips. The GLM revealed that most emotions were associated with activity in the auditory, somatosensory, and motor cortices, cingulate gyrus, insula, and precuneus. Fear and liking also engaged the amygdala. In contrast, the film clips strongly activated limbic and cortical regions implicated in emotional processing. MVPA revealed that activity in the auditory cortex and primary motor cortices reliably discriminated the emotion categories. Our results indicate that different music-induced basic emotions have distinct representations in regions supporting auditory processing, motor control, and interoception but do not strongly rely on limbic and medial prefrontal regions critical for emotions with survival value.

scholarly journals Spatiotemporally Resolved Multivariate Pattern Analysis for M/EEG

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cameron J Higgins ◽  
Diego Vidaurre ◽  
Nils Kolling ◽  
Yunzhe Liu ◽  
Tim Behrens ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Pattern Analysis ◽  
Predictive Accuracy ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Activity Patterns ◽  
Multivariate Pattern Analysis ◽  
Model Framework ◽  
Model Inversion ◽  
Classification And Regression ◽  
Multivariate Pattern ◽  
Generative Encoding

An emerging goal in neuroscience is tracking what information is represented in brain activity over time as a participant completes some task. Whilst EEG and MEG offer millisecond temporal resolution of how activity patterns emerge and evolve, standard decoding methods present significant barriers to interpretability as they obscure the underlying spatial and temporal activity patterns. We instead propose the use of a generative encoding model framework that simultaneously infers the multivariate spatial patterns of activity and the variable timing at which these patterns emerge on individual trials. An encoding model inversion allows predictions to be made about unseen test data in the same way as in standard decoding methodology. These SpatioTemporally Resolved MVPA (STRM) models can be flexibly applied to a wide variety of experimental paradigms, including classification and regression tasks. We show that these models provide insightful maps of the activity driving predictive accuracy metrics; demonstrate behaviourally meaningful variation in the timing of pattern emergence on individual trials; and achieve predictive accuracies that are either equivalent or surpass those achieved by more widely used methods. This provides a new avenue for investigating the brain's representational dynamics and could ultimately support more flexible experimental designs in future.

scholarly journals Association between Psychopathological Dimensions and Sexual Functioning/Sexual Arousal in Young Adults

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (7) ◽  
pp. 3584
Author(s):  
Franklin Soler ◽  
Reina Granados ◽  
Ana I. Arcos-Romero ◽  
Cristóbal Calvillo ◽  
Ana Álvarez-Muelas ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Young Adults ◽  
Sexual Arousal ◽  
Sexual Functioning ◽  
Positive Influence ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Sexual Stimuli ◽  
General Terms ◽  
Subjective Sexual Arousal ◽  
Negative Effect ◽  
Visual Sexual Stimuli

Psychological-psychiatric factors have a different effect on sexual functioning in men and women. This research aimed to examine the association between psychopathological dimensions and dimensions of sexual functioning in Spanish young adults in two studies. Study 1 examined sexual functioning and psychopathological dimensions in 700 women and 516 men. Study 2 conducted an experimental laboratory task to evaluate subjective sexual arousal and genital sensations when watching visual sexual stimuli in a subsample of participants from Study 1 (143 women and 123 men). As a result, the first study showed that depression and anxiety-related symptoms had a negative effect, both in men and women, and having a partner had a positive influence on the dimensions of sexual functioning. The second study showed that anxiety symptoms were positively associated with subjective sexual arousal in both men and women, and anxiety was associated with the assessment of genital sensations in men. The differences between the results of anxiety may be explained because sexual arousal was evaluated in general terms in Study 1, whereas it was evaluated as a state in Study 2. These findings confirm that the presence of psychopathological symptoms contributes to sexual functioning, as well as the necessity of strengthening mental illness prevention programs that include sexual health components.

scholarly journals Skill learning strengthens cortical representations of motor sequences

eLife ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tobias Wiestler ◽  
Jörn Diedrichsen
Keyword(s):  
Skill Acquisition ◽  
Motor Skill ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Activity Patterns ◽  
Skill Learning ◽  
Multivariate Pattern Analysis ◽  
Motor Skill Acquisition ◽  
Average Activity ◽  
Multivariate Pattern ◽  
Cortical Representations

Motor-skill learning can be accompanied by both increases and decreases in brain activity. Increases may indicate neural recruitment, while decreases may imply that a region became unimportant or developed a more efficient representation of the skill. These overlapping mechanisms make interpreting learning-related changes of spatially averaged activity difficult. Here we show that motor-skill acquisition is associated with the emergence of highly distinguishable activity patterns for trained movement sequences, in the absence of average activity increases. During functional magnetic resonance imaging, participants produced either four trained or four untrained finger sequences. Using multivariate pattern analysis, both untrained and trained sequences could be discriminated in primary and secondary motor areas. However, trained sequences were classified more reliably, especially in the supplementary motor area. Our results indicate skill learning leads to the development of specialized neuronal circuits, which allow the execution of fast and accurate sequential movements without average increases in brain activity.

scholarly journals Localizing Brain Function Based on Full Multivariate Activity Patterns: The Case of Visual Perception and Emotion Decoding

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Isaac David ◽  
Fernando A Barrios
Keyword(s):  
Brain Activity ◽  
Activity Patterns ◽  
Linear Method ◽  
Functional Brain Imaging ◽  
Psychological State ◽  
Affective States ◽  
Psychological States ◽  
Brain Functions ◽  
Human Participants ◽  
Multivariate Pattern

It's now common to approach questions about information representation in the brain using multivariate statistics and machine learning methods. What is less recognized is that, in the process, the capacity for data-driven discovery and functional localization has diminished. This is because multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA) studies tend to restrict themselves to regions of interest and severely-filtered data, and sound parameter mapping inference is lacking. Here, reproducible evidence is presented that a high-dimensional, brain-wide multivariate linear method can better detect and characterize the occurrence of visual and socio-affective states in a task-oriented functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiment; in comparison to the classical localizationist correlation analysis. Classification models for a group of human participants and existing rigorous cluster inference methods are used to construct group anatomical-statistical parametric maps, which correspond to the most likely neural correlates of each psychological state. This led to the discovery of a multidimensional pattern of brain activity which reliably encodes for the perception of happiness in the visual cortex, cerebellum and some limbic areas. We failed to find similar evidence for sadness and anger. Anatomical consistency of discriminating features across subjects and contrasts despite of the high number of dimensions, as well as agreement with the wider literature, suggest MVPA is a viable tool for full-brain functional neuroanatomical mapping and not just prediction of psychological states. The present work paves the way for future functional brain imaging studies to provide a complementary picture of brain functions (such as emotion), according to their macroscale dynamics.

scholarly journals Decoding fairness motivations from multivariate brain activity patterns

2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (11) ◽  
pp. 1197-1207 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sebastian P H Speer ◽  
Maarten A S Boksem
Keyword(s):  
Brain Activity ◽  
Activity Patterns ◽  
Dictator Game ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Self Control ◽  
Selfish Behavior ◽  
Temporoparietal Junction ◽  
Dorsolateral Prefrontal ◽  
Multivariate Pattern ◽  
Decoding Accuracy

Abstract A preference for fairness may originate from prosocial or strategic motivations: we may wish to improve others’ well-being or avoid the repercussions of selfish behavior. Here, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to identify neural patterns that dissociate these two motivations. Participants played both the ultimatum and dictator game (UG–DG) as proposers. Because responders can reject the offer in the UG, but not the DG, offers and neural patterns between the games should differ for strategic players but not prosocial players. Using multivariate pattern analysis, we found that the decoding accuracy of neural patterns associated with UG and DG decisions correlated significantly with differences in offers between games in regions associated with theory of mind (ToM), such as the temporoparietal junction, and cognitive control, such as the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and inferior frontal cortex. We conclude that individual differences in prosocial behavior may be driven by variations in the degree to which self-control and ToM processes are engaged during decision-making such that the extent to which these processes are engaged is indicative of either selfish or prosocial motivations.

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