Previous studies have found that men subjectively rate erotic images higher than women. As a result, experts expected women to have a larger brain response to pleasant and unpleasant visual scenes than erotic pictures. However, recent research reports that erotic images more rapidly increased women's electrical brainwave activity than other types of pictures.
The study, published in Brain Research, investigated whether the brain discriminates between unpleasant, pleasant and erotic images. Researchers at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri, showed 55 color slides of unpleasant, pleasant and erotic images to 264 women. The researchers placed electrodes on the participants' heads to measure brainwave activity while viewing the slides.
Researchers found that electrical brainwave activity increased 20 percent more when the participants viewed erotic pictures, as compared to the other images. Furthermore, different areas of the brain processed the erotic material, than those areas for other images.
The researchers suggest that our brains may have evolved to preferentially react to erotic images. "This rapid, selective, and content-specific processing of erotic materials and its dissociation from other pictures (including emotionally positive pictures) suggests the existence of a specialized neural network for prioritized processing of a distinct category of biologically relevant stimuli with high adaptive and evolutionary significance," the study authors write.
REFERENCES:
1. Anokhin AP et al. Rapid discrimination of visual scene content in the human brain. Brain Res 2006 Jun 6;1093(1):167-77. Epub 2006 May 18
Posted by Elaine Gavalas on November 25, 2006 03:46 PM
