Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis researchers have been conducting a study looking at the brainwaves of subjects as they were exposed to various imagery that included some pictures of partially-clad couples in sensual poses. Unsurprisingly, they found that when the study volunteers viewed erotic pictures, their brains produced electrical responses that were stronger than those elicited by other material that was viewed, no matter how pleasant or disturbing the other material may have been. It was the strength of the brain's response to erotic imagery that surprised the scientists, suggesting that different neural circuits may be involved in the processing of erotic images. "We believed both pleasant and disturbing images would evoke a rapid response, but erotic scenes always elicited the strongest response," said researcher Andrey P. Anokhin. It turned out that the brain processed the erotic images around 20 percent faster than other images. But the real surprise was that the brains of both men and women reacted with the same strength and speed.
Research in the past has suggested that men are more visual creatures than women and get more aroused by erotic images than women. Anokhin says the fact that the women's brains in this study exhibited such a quick response to erotic pictures suggests that, perhaps for evolutionary reasons, our brains are programmed to preferentially respond to erotic material. "Usually men subjectively rate erotic material much higher than women," he explained. "So based on those data we would expect lower responses in women, but that was not the case. Women have responses as strong as those seen in men."
Anokhin said recent studies that recorded the electrical activity of single neural cells within the brain have shown that the frontal part of the brain contains neurons that can discriminate between different categories of visual objects, such as dogs versus cats. He speculated that perhaps the human prefrontal cortex contains special neurons that are "tuned" for sex, but conceded that further research would be needed to test this hypothesis.
Source: Washington University in St. Louis
