A functional endophenotype for sexual orientation in humans
A functional endophenotype for sexual orientation in humans
复制标题
DOI：
10.1016/j.neuroimage.2006.08.002
复制
发表时间：
2006-11
期刊：
影响因子：
5.7
通讯作者：
J. Ponseti;H. Bosinski;S. Wolff;M. Peller;O. Jansen;H. Mehdorn;C. Büchel;H. Siebner
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
J. Ponseti;H. Bosinski;S. Wolff;M. Peller;O. Jansen;H. Mehdorn;C. Büchel;H. Siebner
性刺激的视觉刺激激活了人类的奖励系统，并引发了性行为。在这里，我们在性核心刺激的视觉处理过程中进行了事件相关功能磁共振成像，以精确定位与人类性取向有关的神经元。为了将刺激的性别从性偏好中分离出来，我们研究了男性和女性异性恋和同性恋志愿者，同时他们观看了性控制刺激和非性控制刺激。与以前的工作不同，我们使用了核心的单一性别刺激，展示了男性和女性性唤起的生殖器。由于刺激缺乏任何额外的背景信息，它们不会引起与面部、手势或社交互动的神经元处理相关的活动。我们的预测是，观察者的性偏好决定了在人类奖赏和运动系统中，神经元对纯男性或女性性刺激的反应。与我们的预测一致，腹侧纹状体和中央正中丘脑显示出比非偏好刺激更强的神经元对偏好刺激的反应。同样，腹侧运动前皮质是模仿(镜像神经元)和工具相关(规范神经元)动作的关键结构，显示出双侧性偏好特异性激活，这表明观察性唤醒首选性行为的生殖器触发了性行为的动作表征。腹侧纹状体、中央正中丘脑和腹侧运动前皮质的神经元对偏好的性刺激的反应在所有组中都是一致的。我们认为，在人类奖赏和运动系统的核心区域，这种不变的反应模式代表了一种与观察者的性别和刺激的性别无关的性取向功能内表型。
Sexually arousing visual stimuli activate the human reward system and trigger sexual behavior. Here we performed event-related fMRI during visual processing of sexual core stimuli to pinpoint a neuronal correlate of sexual preference in humans. To dissociate gender of the stimulus from sexual preference, we studied male and female heterosexual and homosexual volunteers while they viewed sexual and nonsexual control stimuli. In contrast to previous work, we used core single-sex stimuli displaying male and female sexually aroused genitals. Since stimuli lacked any additional contextual information, they evoked no activity related to neuronal processing of faces, gestures or social interactions. Our prediction was that the sexual preference of the observer determines the neuronal responsiveness to pure male or female sexual stimuli in the human reward and motor system. Consistent with our prediction, the ventral striatum and the centromedian thalamus, showed a stronger neuronal response to preferred relative to non-preferred stimuli. Likewise, the ventral premotor cortex which is a key structure for imitative (mirror neurons) and tool-related (canonical neurons) actions showed a bilateral sexual preference-specific activation, suggesting that viewing sexually aroused genitals of the preferred sex triggers action representations of sexual behavior. The neuronal response of the ventral striatum, centromedian thalamus and ventral premotor cortex to preferred sexual stimuli was consistent across all groups. We propose that this invariant response pattern in core regions of the human reward and motor system represents a functional endophenotype for sexual orientation independent of the gender of the observer and gender of the stimulus.