Interesting Article from MDLinx

MDLinx  Psychiatry 5 minutes to stay current Your Article Summary Brain's response to sexual images linked to number of sexual partners UCLA Health System, 05/15/14 Researchers at UCLA have, for the first time, directly linked brain responses and real–world sexual behaviors. Specifically, the researchers found that how strongly the brain responded to viewing images was related to the number of sex partners a person had in the previous year. Led by Nicole Prause, a research scientist in the department of psychiatry in the UCLA Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, the study was published in the current online edition of the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience. Prause and her colleagues used electroencephalogram (EEG) to measure a particular type of electrical activity in the brains of people as they were viewing a variety of images — some romantic, some pornographic, and some having nothing at all to do with sex. Understanding how the brain responds to sexual images could help scientists create a brain stimulation intervention to reduce sensitivity to sexual reward and thus reduce some people's proclivity to engage in risky sexual activities.