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Accurate sex classification from neural responses to sexual stimuli

Vesa Putkinen, Sanaz Nazari-Farsani, View ORCID ProfileTomi Karjalainen, Severi Santavirta, Matthew Hudson, Kerttu Seppälä, Lihua Sun, Henry K. Karlsson, Jussi Hirvonen, Lauri Nummenmaa
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.01.10.473972
Vesa Putkinen
1Turku PET Centre, University of Turku, Finland
2Turku University Hospital, Turku, Finland
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  • For correspondence: vesa.putkinen@utu.fi
Sanaz Nazari-Farsani
1Turku PET Centre, University of Turku, Finland
2Turku University Hospital, Turku, Finland
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Tomi Karjalainen
1Turku PET Centre, University of Turku, Finland
2Turku University Hospital, Turku, Finland
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  • ORCID record for Tomi Karjalainen
Severi Santavirta
1Turku PET Centre, University of Turku, Finland
2Turku University Hospital, Turku, Finland
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Matthew Hudson
1Turku PET Centre, University of Turku, Finland
5School of Psychology, University of Plymouth, UK
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Kerttu Seppälä
1Turku PET Centre, University of Turku, Finland
2Turku University Hospital, Turku, Finland
6Department of Medical Physics, Turku University Hospital, Turku, Finland
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Lihua Sun
1Turku PET Centre, University of Turku, Finland
2Turku University Hospital, Turku, Finland
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Henry K. Karlsson
1Turku PET Centre, University of Turku, Finland
2Turku University Hospital, Turku, Finland
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Jussi Hirvonen
1Turku PET Centre, University of Turku, Finland
2Turku University Hospital, Turku, Finland
3Department of Radiology, Turku University Hospital, Finland
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Lauri Nummenmaa
1Turku PET Centre, University of Turku, Finland
2Turku University Hospital, Turku, Finland
4Department of Psychology, University of Turku, Finland
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Abstract

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. 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.

Competing Interest Statement

The authors have declared no competing interest.

Copyright 
The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. All rights reserved. No reuse allowed without permission.
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Posted January 11, 2022.
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Accurate sex classification from neural responses to sexual stimuli
Vesa Putkinen, Sanaz Nazari-Farsani, Tomi Karjalainen, Severi Santavirta, Matthew Hudson, Kerttu Seppälä, Lihua Sun, Henry K. Karlsson, Jussi Hirvonen, Lauri Nummenmaa
bioRxiv 2022.01.10.473972; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.01.10.473972
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Accurate sex classification from neural responses to sexual stimuli
Vesa Putkinen, Sanaz Nazari-Farsani, Tomi Karjalainen, Severi Santavirta, Matthew Hudson, Kerttu Seppälä, Lihua Sun, Henry K. Karlsson, Jussi Hirvonen, Lauri Nummenmaa
bioRxiv 2022.01.10.473972; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.01.10.473972

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