Worldwide study reveals fluid sexual preferences in females and no association between gynephilia and non-heterosexuality.

Background: Social factors and a lack of clearself-awareness may prevent women from explicitly reporting their non-heterosexuality, and implicit measures could provide more reliable data.

Aim: This study examined non-heterosexuality and gynephilia in a large, global sample of women using implicit and explicit methods.

Methods: A sample of 491 women participated in this cross-sectional study.

Sexual offenses and the brain.

Sexual offenses are a great concern worldwide due to the devastating physical and psychological consequences the victims of such crimes often experience. It is an important task to investigate potential mechanisms that may underlie sexual offending and predispose an individual for such antisocial behavior. Advanced techniques in neuroscience are increasingly used to uncover biomarkers in psychiatric disorders and organic brain disease.

Acquired Pedophilia: international Delphi-method-based consensus guidelines.

Idiopathic and acquired pedophilia are two different disorders with two different etiologies. However, the differential diagnosis is still very difficult, as the behavioral indicators used to discriminate the two forms of pedophilia are underexplored, and clinicians are still devoid of clear guidelines describing the clinical and neuroscientific investigations suggested to help them with this difficult task. Furthermore, the consequences of misdiagnosis are not known, and a consensus regarding the legal consequences for the two kinds of offenders is still lacking.

Attitudes towards urban howler monkeys (Alouatta caraya) in Paraguay.

Increasing urbanisation is encroaching into natural habitats and sometimes forcing wildlife into urban centres. Whether or not wildlife can thrive in an urban environment is dependent on many factors, one of which is how the species is perceived by local people. This study focuses on the city of Pilar in south-west Paraguay, which is home to a population of urban-dwelling black and gold howler monkeys (Alouatta caraya).

A Worldwide Internet Study Based on Implicit Association Test Revealed a Higher Prevalence of Adult Males' Androphilia than Ever Reported Before.

Background: Social constrictions or the lack of a clear awareness about one's sexual orientation may influence the ability of individuals to explicitly declare their sexual preferences. Thus, the actual prevalence of males' sexual attraction toward adult males, which is estimated by studies relying only on explicit questionnaires, may be biased. Conversely, the implicit measurement of androphilia may be a promising method to obtain more reliable data.

Profiling acquired pedophilic behavior: Retrospective analysis of 66 Italian forensic cases of pedophilia.

Neurological disorders can be mis-diagnosed as psychiatric ones. This might happen to pedophilia emerging as a symptom of brain insult (i.e.

Possible Balancing Selection in Human Female Homosexuality.

A growing number of researchers suggest that female homosexuality is at least in part influenced by genetic factors. Unlike for male homosexuality, few familial studies have attempted to explore maintenance of this apparently fitness-detrimental trait in the population. Using multiple recruitment methods, we explored fecundity and sexual orientation within the pedigrees of 1,458 adult female respondents.

Selective reaching in macaques: evidence for action-centred attention.

When a monkey selects a piece of food lying on the ground from among other viable objects in the near vicinity, only the desired item governs the particular pattern and direction of the animal's reaching action. It would seem then that selection is an important component controlling the animal's action. But, we may ask, is the selection process in such cases impervious to the presence of other objects that could constitute potential obstacles to or constraints on movement execution? And if it is, in fact, pervious to other objects, do they have a direct influence on the organization of the response? The kinematics of macaques' reaching movements were examined by the current study that analysed some exemplars as they selectively reached to grasp a food item in the absence as well as in the presence of potential obstacles (i.

Response: Avuncularity and Kin Selection in Homosexuals: A Problematic Test or a Problematic Hypothesis?

Here we respond to Vasey et al.'s critical comments regarding our article, "Societal norms rather than sexual orientation influence kin altruism and avuncularity in tribal Urak-Lawoi, Italian, and Spanish adult males" (Camperio Ciani, Battaglia, & Liotta, 2015 , JSR doi:10.1080/00224499.

Intersegmental Coordination in the Kinematics of Prehension Movements of Macaques.

The most popular model to explain how prehensile movements are organized assumes that they comprise two "components", the reaching component encoding information regarding the object's spatial location and the grasping component encoding information on the object's intrinsic properties such as size and shape. Comparative kinematic studies on grasping behavior in the humans and in macaques have been carried out to investigate the similarities and differences existing across the two species. Although these studies seem to favor the hypothesis that macaques and humans share a number of kinematic features it remains unclear how the reaching and grasping components are coordinated during prehension movements in free-ranging macaque monkeys.

Societal Norms Rather Than Sexual Orientation Influence Kin Altruism and Avuncularity in Tribal Urak-Lawoi, Italian, and Spanish Adult Males.

Homosexual males could balance their low fitness by increasing benefits to relatives either through kin-directed altruism or by avuncularity (altruistic behavior toward the children of siblings). Evidence in support of kin selection and avuncularity includes the fact that homosexuals seem to be more empathic and altruistic than heterosexuals. Other studies have not confirmed behaviors that increase kin altruism in homosexuals.

Human homosexuality: a paradigmatic arena for sexually antagonistic selection?

Sexual conflict likely plays a crucial role in the origin and maintenance of homosexuality in our species. Although environmental factors are known to affect human homosexual (HS) preference, sibling concordances and population patterns related to HS indicate that genetic components are also influencing this trait in humans. We argue that multilocus, partially X-linked genetic factors undergoing sexually antagonistic selection that promote maternal female fecundity at the cost of occasional male offspring homosexuality are the best candidates capable of explaining the frequency, familial clustering, and pedigree asymmetries observed in HS male proband families.

Implicit measurements of sexual preference in self-declared heterosexual men: a pilot study on the rate of androphilia in Italy.

Introduction: An unambiguous measurement of the rate of nonheterosexuality in the male population (male bisexuality and homosexuality) is essential to estimate the health risks associated with same-sex sexual behavior and to scale social and health programs for these citizens. However, self-reported questionnaires on explicit measures of sexual orientation yield significant underestimations of nonheterosexuality. A necessary prerequisite for nonheterosexual preference is androphilia (sexual-erotic attraction to males), which can be explored through psychological tests.

Monkey see, monkey reach: action selection of reaching movements in the macaque monkey.

Highly efficient systems are needed to link perception with action in the context of the highly complex environments in which primates move and interact. Another important component is, nonetheless, needed for action: selection. When one piece of fruit from a branch is being chosen by a monkey, many other pieces are within reach and visible: do the perceptual features of the objects surrounding a target determine interference effects? In humans, reaching to grasp a desired object appears to integrate the motor features of the objects which might become potential targets - a process which seems to be driven by inhibitory attention mechanisms.

How posture affects macaques' reach-to-grasp movements.

Although there is a wealth of behavioral data regarding grasping movements in non-human primates, how posture influences the kinematics of prehensile behavior is not yet clearly understood. The purpose of this study was to examine and compare kinematic descriptions of grip behaviors while primates (macaque monkeys) were in a sitting posture or when stopping after quadrupedal locomotion (i.e.

Reach-to-grasp movements in Macaca fascicularis monkeys: the Isochrony Principle at work.

Humans show a spontaneous tendency to increase the velocity of their movements depending on the linear extent of their trajectory in order to keep execution time approximately constant. Termed the isochrony principle, this compensatory mechanism refers to the observation that the velocity of voluntary movements increases proportionally with their linear extension. Although there is a wealth of psychophysical data regarding isochrony in humans, there is none regarding non-human primates.

Fecundity of paternal and maternal non-parental female relatives of homosexual and heterosexual men.

A variety of social, developmental, biological and genetic factors influence sexual orientation in males. Thus, several hypotheses have attempted to explain the sustenance of genetic factors that influence male homosexuality, despite decreased fecundity within the homosexuals. Kin selection, the existence of maternal effects and two forms of balancing selection, sexually antagonistic selection and overdominance, have been proposed as compensatory mechanisms for reduced homosexual fecundity.

Reaching and grasping behavior in Macaca fascicularis: a kinematic study.

The prehensile hand is one of the major traits distinguishing primates from other mammal species. All primates, in fact, are able to grasp an object and hold it in part or entirely using a single hand. Although there is a wealth of behavioral data regarding grasping movements in humans and apes, there is relatively little material on macaques, the animal model often used to investigate neuronal mechanisms responsible for grip control in humans.

Mothers who kill their offspring: testing evolutionary hypothesis in a 110-case Italian sample.

Objectives: This research aimed to identify incidents of mothers in Italy killing their own children and to test an adaptive evolutionary hypothesis to explain their occurrence.

Methods: 110 cases of mothers killing 123 of their own offspring from 1976 to 2010 were analyzed. Each case was classified using 13 dichotomic variables.

Factors associated with higher fecundity in female maternal relatives of homosexual men.

Introduction: Recent evidence suggests that sexually antagonistic genetic factors in the maternal line promote homosexuality in men and fecundity in female relatives. However, it is not clear if and how these genetic factors are phenotypically expressed to simultaneously induce homosexuality in men and increased fecundity in their mothers and maternal aunts.

Aims: The aim of the present study was to investigate the phenotypic expression of genetic factors that could explain increased fecundity in the putative female carriers.

Male homosexuality: nature or culture?

Introduction: Debate continues on whether or not male homosexuality (MH) is a result of biological or cultural factors. The debate persists despite the fact that these two sides have different abilities to create a scientific environment to support their cause. Biological theorists produced evidence, however, that these are not always robust.

Genetic factors increase fecundity in female maternal relatives of bisexual men as in homosexuals.

Introduction: Recent studies on male homosexuals showed increased fecundity of maternal female relatives of homosexual probands, compared to those of heterosexual controls. We have suggested that these data could be explained by the transmission, in the maternal line, of an X-linked genetic factor that promotes androphilic behavior in females and homosexuality in males.

Aim: Our original studies were on relatives of male subjects who declared themselves to be exclusively homosexual.