What Can Brain Scans Tell Us About Sex?

As the article implies, when it comes to sex, women are likely to lie. Experiments on pornography and masturbation by Psychology Professor Terry Fisher showed this. Subjects were divided into 3 groups. One group handed answers to an assistant. Another group was told answers were completely anonymous. The third group was hooked up to fake lie detectors. Men’s answers were largely consistent across all 3 groups. The women hooked up to fake lie detectors answered like the men. The women expecting anonymity answered with lower numbers. The women handing answers to an assistant who may have read them gave the lowest numbers. Unless tricked to tell the truth with lie detectors, women often lied about their sexual habits. I also found it odd that the second half of this article questioned the validity of the conclusion given in the first half---that men’s and women’s brains behave similarly. So why the article? I agree with another commenter that the article is probably a justification that sexual differences between men and women are not biological, but are socially imposed. I imagine most people who only read the headline or the first few paragraphs might not realize that this justification and conclusion have serious problems.

These studies may just indicate how that today's brain imaging measures are still too crude to tell the difference between men and women - much like today's AI has until only recently had difficulty in recognizing men vs. women.

"In fact, it is still extremely difficult to interpret what activity in a given region of the brain really means." Thank you, The salience of this well-intentioned article was enhanced when the above statement appeared after all the clickbait.

It is likely true that more men than women watch porno, but I wonder it the reason is that women have better imaginations and thus are able to more efficiently carry in the minds the images that arouse them. No need to go online when you can access snippets in your brain.

This is what you have to say about “cultural attitudes toward pornography — historically, women have been shamed for consuming it —“?? How about: pornography may involve and reflect systematic injustice and violence toward women in its production, thereby potentially complicating how women perceive its images.”?

The article’s illustration does nothing for me.

I’m happy to see The NY Times covering topics like this. My concern is how the writer frequently uses ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ interchangeably. This is incorrect and will only further the confusion about the difference between sex and gender. The writer also says “Healthy adult men and women of different sexual orientations (including bisexual and transgender)...” Transgender is not a sexuality: it’s a gender identity. The artist also uses stereotyping for one of the featured images. A bow is used to represent a woman and a mustache is used to represent a man.

Metaanalysis or not, the science reporter should address generalizability: are subjects who volunteer to enter a brain scanner to look at sexually explicit images – or who would voluntarily allow researchers to explore their physiologic sexual responses – really typical of the general public? And how much can we thus conclude about he general public? (ie, what if the researchers had 20 male potential volunteers for every woman that signed up to participate, or vice-versa? No surprise that everyone scanned has an interest in sex, but what does this say about the world at large? Nothing!)

Metaanalysis or not, the science reporter should address generalizability: are subjects who volunteer to enter a brain scanner to look at sexually explicit images – or who would voluntarily allow researchers to explore their physiologic sexual responses – really typical of the general public? And how much can we thus conclude about he general public? Perhaps no surprise that everyone scanned has an interest in sex, but what does this say about the world at large? Potentially very little.

I’ve reached the point where I find little value in pieces like this. Although they use the narrative form of surveying “scientific research,” they are in fact essays espousing contemporary “politically correct” liberal and social constructionist views of sex/gender. Their conclusions are generally forgone, and their scientific merit and impartiality dubious.

I'm interested in the implications. If sexual decisions or behaviors are processed by the same kinds of neural connections as other behaviors, then they should be equally modifiable by training. Doesn't that flyover the landscape of homosexual preference being inborn, albeit not genetic? How is it that everyone has a type that turns them on and types that do not? Is that practiced desire, turned on and turned over so many times it's engineered by practice? Can one train their sensuality for sex like training to taste wine or tea or appreciate good BBQ? Sheewiz, the possibilities and questions are endless...

I think a lot more marriages will be saved by acknowledging the obvious -- that men and women have, on average, different sexual appetites. It's not about cells in the brain; it's about cells in the heart.

“In other words, when men and women viewed pornographic imagery, the way their brains responded, in the aggregate, was largely the same.” No No No The anatomical region in the brain of neurons that processed the sexy pictures was pretty much the same. What the brains are doing at the same with what those regions process is known to be different from person to person and sex to sex. “Subjective” is a part of what brains do you know. Or maybe not. If anyone is vindicated it is Tooby And Cosmides Adapted Mind. But no one is vindicated. And I eagerly await the neuronal substrate that establishes “gender”. That will be fun. Especially as reported on by the Times. Prediction: identity politics will overwrite whatever the literature actually says with whatever mumbo jumbo the writer learned in undergrad gender studies courses.

The conclusion of the meta-analysis is that "neurocircuitries associated with sexual arousal do not differ in men and women independent of their sexual orientation" (directly from the research paper). This is a far cry from the journalist's conclusion that the results are evidence "for dispensing with categories like... “male” and “female” . The writer's purpose is not to clarify the research for the reader but to promote the foregone conclusion that male and female categories are socially constructed.

"But even “objective” brain activation can be ambiguous. In a previous study, Georgiadis found that in women, the same areas that tend to become active when viewing sexual imagery that neuroscientists have deemed pleasing also became active in response to photos of vomiting or feces. What scientists tend to regard as “arousal” on brain scans could also be its opposite, or perhaps some combination of each." Or the scientists' definition of arousal needs broadening, in that they are observing activity in a broader though no less real sense: literally, strong imagery incites within our brains more neural activity than "mild" imagery.

"Desire" and "arousal" and "male" and "female" are very meaningful categories that need to be kept in order to understand human sexuality. Highly recommended book that discusses differences in male and female sexuality: https://www.amazon.com/Come-You-Are-Surprising-Transform/dp/1476762090 (This link will enable readers to access Amazon's "Look inside" feature, to read portions and to see the Table of Contents. I am not trying to get you to buy from Amazon.)

P.N.A.S.? Really?

Interesting. But I think I recall being told that sugar is as addictive as heroin because the images of brains on/off these two substances are very similar. Color me skeptical about that. So maybe what is going on in our minds is only partly indicated by these images, and there are complex behavior-driving activities in the brain that simply can't be represented in an MRI.

This study seems hugely flawed from the get go given the group of people they chose to test - self-identified pornography consumers. Of course this tells us little about any difference between male and female brains. Rather it illuminates the obvious similarities between brains of people who regularly look at pornography for pleasure. In fact, there are numerous studies that illuminate differences between male and female brains when surveying groups who do NOT self select as consumers of pornography. In studies, women’s brains tend to be “turned on” by what is in fact a greater breadth of content than most men. For example, when studied, straight and gay men were turned on most by pornography that matched their sexual orientation, while women (both lesbian and straight) were equally turned on by everything they were shown - no matter the orientation of the content.

In ancient times in the West and in other cultures, our notions of male hypersexuality were seen to be traits of women.

Previous studies have already shown these results, the disparity between a woman's physiological arousal and their conscious desire, compared to male arousal that translates directly to desire. Other studies have also shown that women respond to a wider variety of images than men, suggesting that they are more sexually omnivorous. I think it's no secret that women are still trying to break free from societal constraints and dictates, and more authentically own their sexuality. The recent book Three Women explores this issue.

In other words, we really need new, very carefully thought out and designed tests on statistically significant numbers of people of all backgrounds (and as diverse geographically, sociologically, etc. as possible).

It is important to note that this study is just a meta-analysis of other studies, many of which were testing different ideas and hypotheses. Their conclusions make little sense in the light of the overwhelming evidence of differences between male and female brains and sexual behavior - not only across human cultures but across species. Sex-based differences in brain structure and physiology reflect the differences in hormone/receptor distribution and interactions as well as innate development programs. Perhaps the conclusions ere overhyped by the reporters - to me, they make little sense.

It is hard not to conclude here that neuroimaging is a pretty clumsy means for better understanding human sexuality. It is interesting that different parts of our brain "light up" under different circumstances, but monitoring that activity sounds very imprecise, and interpreting that information sounds difficult, at best, to do objectively. It makes me wary of the steady stream of neuroimaging-based studies reported in popular media. I feel like we might be better off if we quit approaching human behavior as a code to be cracked: the reduction and consequent conclusions that ensue are pernicious.

The interpretation of psycho/social/sexual behavior from brain scan data seems somewhat like speculating on what is wrong with someone who has a temperature of 99.8. It reads as ridiculous reductionistic "science" that is just really strange.