Is Dating Behavior in Digital Contexts Driven by Evolutionary Programs? A Selective Review.

In recent years, millions of citizens all over the world have used digital dating services. It remains unknown to what extent human sexuality will be changed by this. Based on an evolutionary psychological perspective, we assume that sexual selection shaped behavioural tendencies in men and women that are designed to increase the reproductive fitness.

Neural processing associated with cognitive empathy in pedophilia and child sexual offending.

Behavioral studies found evidence for superior cognitive empathy (CE) in pedophilic men without a history of child sexual offending (P - CSO) compared to pedophilic men with a history of child sexual offending (P + CSO). Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies also point to differences between P - CSO and P + CSO. Neural processing associated with CE has not yet been investigated.

Serotonin system-associated genetic and epigenetic changes in pedophilia and child sexual offending.

Numerous studies have shown associations between anomalies of the serotonergic system and impulsive behavior, depression, or traumatic life events. However, it is currently unknown, whether pedophilia or child sexual offending (CSO) is also related to alterations of the serotonergic system. Using a two by two factorial paradigm within a multisite consortium (NeMUP*) study cohort, we analyzed whether the SLC6A4-linked polymorphic region (SLC6A4LPR) or the SLC6A4 (transporter) and HTR3A (receptor) promotor methylation rates differed with regard to a pedophilic preference and/or child sexual offending.

MEG reveals preference specific increases of sexual-image-evoked responses in paedophilic sexual offenders and healthy controls.

Objectives: Paedophilic disorder is characterised by sexual attraction towards children. Classification of a counterpart as sexually attractive likely occurs rapidly, and involves both conscious and unconscious attentional and cognitive processes. Magnetoencephalography (MEG) is an imaging method especially well-suited to examine visual and attentional processes triggered by sexual images within the range of milliseconds.

Two Sides of One Coin: A Comparison of Clinical and Neurobiological Characteristics of Convicted and Non-Convicted Pedophilic Child Sexual Offenders.

High prevalence of child sexual offending stand in contradiction to low conviction rates (one-tenth at most) of child sexual offenders (CSOs). Little is known about possible differences between convicted and non-convicted pedophilic CSOs and why only some become known to the judicial system. This investigation takes a closer look at the two sides of "child sexual offending" by focusing on clinical and neurobiological characteristics of convicted and non-convicted pedophilic CSOs as presented in the Neural Mechanisms Underlying Pedophilia and sexual offending against children (NeMUP)*-study.

Expectation of sexual images of adults and children elicits differential dorsal anterior cingulate cortex activation in pedophilic sexual offenders and healthy controls.

Background: Pedophilic disorder is characterized by increased sexual interest towards children, with comparatively lesser interest towards adults. In real life, the behavior of subjects with pedophilic disorder is shaped by evaluative processes in response to sexually relevant cues. Therefore, brain activation during anticipation of sexually relevant cues is of potential interest.

Empathy in pedophilia and sexual offending against children: A multifaceted approach.

Empathy is regarded as dynamic risk factor of child sexual offending. However, empathy research in the context of child sexual abuse suffers from various problems. First, prior studies failed to differentiate between pedophilic and nonpedophilic sexual offenders.

Author Correction: Child sexual offenders show prenatal and epigenetic alterations of the androgen system.

The affiliations. Originally, Kolja Schilz was named last in the affiliations, implying that he is the senior author. This has been corrected; Kolja Schilz is now mentioned after Martin Walter in both the html and PDF versions of the article.

Child sexual offenders show prenatal and epigenetic alterations of the androgen system.

Child sexual offending (CSO) places a serious burden on society and medicine and pedophilia (P) is considered a major risk factor for CSO. The androgen system is closely linked to sexual development and behavior. This study assessed markers of prenatal brain androgenization, genetic parameters of androgen receptor function, epigenetic regulation, and peripheral hormones in a 2 × 2 factorial design comprising the factors Offense (yes/no) and Pedophilia (yes/no) in analyzing blood samples from 194 subjects (57 P+CSO, 45 P-CSO, 20 CSO-P, and 72 controls) matched for age and intelligence.

Multimodal neuroimaging measures and intelligence influence pedophile child sexual offense behavior.

Pedophilia is a heterogeneous disorder for which the neurobiological correlates are not well established. In particular, there are no biological markers identifying individuals with high risk to commit child sexual offense (CSO). Pedophiles with CSO (P+CSO; N = 73), pedophiles without CSO (P-CSO; N = 77), and non-pedophilic controls (NPC; N = 133) were assessed using multimodal structural neuroimaging measures including: cortical thickness (CT), surface area (SA), and white matter fractional anisotropy (FA), as well as full scale IQ (FSIQ) performance.

Pedophilic sex offenders are characterised by reduced GABA concentration in dorsal anterior cingulate cortex.

A pedophilic disorder is characterised by abnormal sexual urges towards prepubescent children. Child abusive behavior is frequently a result of lack of behavioral inhibition and current treatment options entail, next to suppressing unchangeable sexual orientation, measures to increase cognitive and attentional control. We tested, if in brain regions subserving attentional control of behavior and perception of salient stimuli, such inhibition deficit can be observed also on the level of inhibitory neurotransmitters.

Clinical characteristics associated with paedophilia and child sex offending - Differentiating sexual preference from offence status.

Contrary to public perception, child sex offending (CSO) and paedophilia are not the same. Only half of all cases of CSO are motivated by paedophilic preference, and a paedophilic preference does not necessarily lead to CSO. However, studies that investigated clinical factors accompanying and contributing to paedophilia so far mainly relied on paedophiles with a history of CSO.

Sexual Responses Are Facilitated by High-Order Contextual Cues in Females but Not in Males.

Sexual responses are thought to be controlled by a brain module called the sexual module. Sexual strategies of males and females vary to a great extent, and sexual responses of males and females may be affected by their sexual strategies. However, the current view of the sexual module is that of a unisex module.

Decoding Pedophilia: Increased Anterior Insula Response to Infant Animal Pictures.

Previous research found increased brain responses of men with sexual interest in children (i.e., pedophiles) not only to pictures of naked children but also to pictures of child faces.

Neural correlates of moral judgment in pedophilia.

Pedophilia is a sexual preference that is often associated with child sex offending (CSO). Sexual urges towards prepubescent children and specifically acting upon those urges are universally regarded as immoral. However, up until now, it is completely unknown whether moral processing of sexual offenses is altered in pedophiles.

Executive Functioning in Pedophilia and Child Sexual Offending.

Objectives: Pedophilia (P) is a psychiatric disease associated with sexual attraction toward children and often accompanied by child sexual offending (CSO). Consequently, it is important to address the understanding of executive dysfunctions that may increase the probability of CSO. Moreover, this research field has been lacking to disentangle executive deficits associated with pedophilia (as a deviant sexual preference) from those associated with CSO (as a deviant sexual behavior).

Evidence for superior neurobiological and behavioral inhibitory control abilities in non-offending as compared to offending pedophiles.

Neurobehavioral models of pedophilia and child sexual offending suggest a pattern of temporal and in particular prefrontal disturbances leading to inappropriate behavioral control and subsequently an increased propensity to sexually offend against children. However, clear empirical evidence for such mechanisms is still missing. Using a go/nogo paradigm in combination with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) we compared behavioral performance and neural response patterns among three groups of men matched for age and IQ: pedophiles with (N = 40) and without (N = 37) a history of hands-on sexual offences against children as well as healthy non-offending controls (N = 40).

Investigating the Task Dependency of Viewing Time Effects.

The viewing time method (VT) is an indirect measure of sexual interest in which participants are usually asked to rate the sexual attractiveness of target stimuli while their response latencies are unobtrusively measured. Higher response latencies for a certain group of depicted individuals indicate sexual interest in that group. Contrary to the general assumption that the picture content accounts for this effect by eliciting affect- or attention-based response delays, we hypothesized that the attractiveness rating task might be responsible for the VT effect.

Assessing paedophilia based on the haemodynamic brain response to face images.

Objectives: Objective assessment of sexual preferences may be of relevance in the treatment and prognosis of child sexual offenders. Previous research has indicated that this can be achieved by pattern classification of brain responses to sexual child and adult images. Our recent research showed that human face processing is tuned to sexual age preferences.

The (in)consistency of changes in brain macrostructure in male paedophiles: A combined T1-weighted and diffusion tensor imaging study.

Thus far, four studies have used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to test for differences in brain structure between paedophilic (i.e. sexually attracted to pre-pubescent children) and teleiophilic (i.

The Neurobiology and Psychology of Pedophilia: Recent Advances and Challenges.

A pedophilic disorder is recognized for its impairment to the individual and for the harm it may cause to others. Pedophilia is often considered a side issue and research into the nature of pedophilia is delayed in comparison to research into other psychiatric disorders. However, with the increasing use of neuroimaging techniques, such as functional and structural magnetic resonance imaging (sMRI, fMRI), together with neuropsychological studies, we are increasing our knowledge of predisposing and accompanying factors contributing to pedophilia development.

Brain alterations in paedophilia: a critical review.

Psychosocial and biological factors have been implicated in paedophilia, such as alterations in brain structure and function. The purpose of this paper is to review the expanding body of literature on this topic including brain abnormality case reports, as well as structural and functional neuroimaging studies. Case studies of men who have committed sexual offences against children implicate frontal and temporal abnormalities that may be associated with impaired impulse inhibition.