Neural bases of hypoactive sexual desire disorder in women: an event-related FMRI study.

Introduction: Although there is an abundant debate regarding the mechanisms sustaining one of the most common sexual complaints among women, i.e., female hypoactive sexual desire disorder (HSDD), little remains known about the specific neural bases of this disorder.

Intention, false beliefs, and delusional jealousy: insights into the right hemisphere from neurological patients and neuroimaging studies.

Jealousy sits high atop of a list comprised of the most human emotional experiences, although its nature, rationale, and origin are poorly understood. In the past decade, a series of neurological case reports and neuroimaging findings have been particularly helpful in piecing together jealousy's puzzle. In order to understand and quantify the neurological factors that might be important in jealousy, we reviewed the current literature in this specific field.

Neuroimaging of love: fMRI meta-analysis evidence toward new perspectives in sexual medicine.

Introduction: Brain imaging is becoming a powerful tool in the study of human cerebral functions related to close personal relationships. Outside of subcortical structures traditionally thought to be involved in reward-related systems, a wide range of neuroimaging studies in relationship science indicate a prominent role for different cortical networks and cognitive factors. Thus, the field needs a better anatomical/network/whole-brain model to help translate scientific knowledge from lab bench to clinical models and ultimately to the patients suffering from disorders associated with love and couple relationships.

Understanding actions of others: the electrodynamics of the left and right hemispheres. A high-density EEG neuroimaging study.

Background: When we observe an individual performing a motor act (e.g. grasping a cup) we get two types of information on the basis of how the motor act is done and the context: what the agent is doing (i.

[Unconscious sexual desire: fMRI and EEG evidences from self-expansion theory to mirror neurons].

Recent advances in cognitive-social neuroscience allow a better understanding of the mechanisms underlying dyadic relationships. From a neuronal viewpoint, desire in dyadic relationships involves a specific fronto-temporo-parietal network and also a subcortical network that mediates conscious and unconscious mechanisms of reward, satisfaction, attention, self representation and self-expansion. The integration of this neuroscientific knowledge on the unconscious neurobiological activation for sexual desire in the human brain will provide physicians with new therapeutical and neuroscientific tools to apprehend sexual disorders in couple.

"Sleeping Beauty paraphilia": deviant desire in the context of bodily self-image disturbance in a patient with a fronto-parietal traumatic brain injury.

Background: Several case series and reports describe paraphilia as occurring after brain damage, mostly in the frontal lobes and diencephalic structures. Hypersexuality and paraphilic behaviors are also documented in a variety of other neurologic disorders, (e.g.

Mental representation of subjective pleasure of partnered experiences in women's brain conveyed through event-related fMRI.

Background: Functional neuroimaging demonstrates a combined role of central and peripheral mechanisms in human sexual response. Nevertheless, inter-individual subjective differences remain unresolved. Since Freud, controversy remains regarding the similarity of each type of partnered sexual pleasure experience.

Improving human brain mapping via joint inversion of brain electrodynamics and the BOLD signal.

We present several methods to improve the resolution of human brain mapping by combining information obtained from surface electroencephalography (EEG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) of the same participants performing the same task in separate imaging sessions. As an initial step in our methods we used independent component analysis (ICA) to obtain task-related sources for both EEG and fMRI. We then used that information in an integrated cost function that attempts to match both data sources and trades goodness of fit in one regime for another.

Spatio-temporal dynamics of human intention understanding in temporo-parietal cortex: a combined EEG/fMRI repetition suppression paradigm.

Inferring the intentions of other people from their actions recruits an inferior fronto-parietal action observation network as well as a putative social network that includes the posterior superior temporal sulcus (STS). However, the functional dynamics within and among these networks remains unclear. Here we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and high-density electroencephalogram (EEG), with a repetition suppression design, to assess the spatio-temporal dynamics of decoding intentions.

New electroencephalogram (EEG) neuroimaging methods of analyzing brain activity applicable to the study of human sexual response.

Introduction: Electroencephalogram (EEG) combined with brain source localization algorithms is becoming a powerful tool in the neuroimaging study of human cerebral functions.

Aim: The present article provides a tutorial on the various EEG methods currently used to study the human brain activity, notably during sexual response.

Main Outcome Measures: Review of published literature on standard EEG waveform analyses and most recent electrical neuroimaging techniques (microstate approach and two methods of brain source localization).

Right hemisphere dominance for understanding the intentions of others: evidence from a split-brain patient.

Understanding the actions performed by other people is a key aspect of social interaction, including in clinical settings where patients are learning from therapists and caregivers. While lesions of the left cerebral hemisphere induce praxic disorders, the hemispheric specialisation of intention understanding remains unclear. Do patients with a right hemispheric lesion understand the intentions of other people properly? The present study investigates how a split-brain patient understands the means (what) and intentions (why) of the actions of other people.

Differential recruitment of anterior intraparietal sulcus and superior parietal lobule during visually guided grasping revealed by electrical neuroimaging.

Dorsal parietal cortex is required for visually guided prehension. Transcranial magnetic stimulation to either the anterior intraparietal sulcus (aIPS) or superior parietal lobule (SPL) disrupts on-line adaptive adjustments of grasp when objects are perturbed. We used high-density electroencephalography during grasping to determine the relative timing of these two areas and to test whether the temporal contribution of each site would change when the task goal was perturbed.

Using ICA and realistic BOLD models to obtain joint EEG/fMRI solutions to the problem of source localization.

We develop two techniques to solve for the spatio-temporal neural activity patterns using Electroencephalogram (EEG) and Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) data. EEG-only source localization is an inherently underconstrained problem, whereas fMRI by itself suffers from poor temporal resolution. Combining the two modalities transforms source localization into an overconstrained problem, and produces a solution with the high temporal resolution of EEG and the high spatial resolution of fMRI.

The chronoarchitecture of human sexual desire: a high-density electrical mapping study.

Recent neuroimaging research suggests that human sexual desire (SD) recruits both the limbic system and higher-order cognitive brain areas. Because of the temporal limitation of this technique, the chronoarchitecture of SD remains however unresolved. Here, we investigated the spatio-temporal dynamics of SD by combining a behavioral desire decision task with high-density visual event-related potential (VEP) recordings and brain source estimations.

Why is your spouse so predictable? Connecting mirror neuron system and self-expansion model of love.

The simulation theory assumes we understand actions and intentions of others through a direct matching process. This matching process activates a complex brain network involving the mirror neuron system (MNS), which is self-related and active when one does something or observes someone else acting. Because social psychology admits that mutual intention's understanding grows in close relationship as love grows, we hypothesize that mirror mechanisms take place in love relationships.

The power of love on the human brain.

Romantic love has been the source for some of the greatest achievements of mankind throughout the ages. The recent localization of romantic love within subcortico-cortical reward, motivation and emotion systems in the human brain has suggested that love is a goal-directed drive with predictable facilitation effects on cognitive behavior, rather than a pure emotion. Here we show that the subliminal exposure of a beloved's name (romantic prime) during a lexical decision task dramatically improves performance in women in love (Experiment 1), as the subliminal presentation of a passion's descriptive noun does (Experiment 2).

[Interactions between human sexual arousal and sexual desire: a challenge for social neuroscience].

The frequent interaction and synergy between sexual arousal and sexual desire occuring during a sexual experience explains the difficulty in disentagling these two phenomena in the human sexual response. Sexual desire is defined as a goal-directed motivational state integrating the other in one's personal sphere on the basis of intentionality, rather than by instinct only. Sexual arousal includes physical manifestations and subjective perception of excitement.

Induction of an illusory shadow person.

Stimulation of a site on the brain's left hemisphere prompts the creepy feeling that somebody is close by. The strange sensation that somebody is nearby when no one is actually present has been described by psychiatric and neurological patients, as well as by healthy subjects, but it is not understood how the illusion is triggered by the brain. Here we describe the repeated induction of this sensation in a patient who was undergoing presurgical evaluation for epilepsy treatment, as a result of focal electrical stimulation of the left temporoparietal junction: the illusory person closely 'shadowed' changes in the patient's body position and posture.

Audio-visual multisensory integration in superior parietal lobule revealed by human intracranial recordings.

Intracranial recordings from three human subjects provide the first direct electrophysiological evidence for audio-visual multisensory processing in the human superior parietal lobule (SPL). Auditory and visual sensory inputs project to the same highly localized region of the parietal cortex with auditory inputs arriving considerably earlier (30 ms) than visual inputs (75 ms). Multisensory integration processes in this region were assessed by comparing the response to simultaneous audio-visual stimulation with the algebraic sum of responses to the constituent auditory and visual unisensory stimulus conditions.

Preattentive interference between touch and audition: a case study on multisensory alloesthesia.

Alloesthesia is a rare clinical condition that corresponds to a spatial disorder of stimulus localization, in which patients experience a given stimulus on the side opposite to the side of stimulation. Whereas it has been mostly described for unisensory stimulations, evidence of multisensory alloesthesia is only anecdotal. Here, we investigated a case of multisensory auditory-tactile alloesthesia.

Brain state-dependent functional hemispheric specialization in men but not in women.

Hemispheric specialization is reliably demonstrated in patients with unilateral lesions or disconnected hemispheres, but is inconsistent in healthy populations. The reason for this paradox is unclear. We propose that functional hemispheric specialization in healthy participants depends upon functional brain states at stimulus arrival (FBS).

Letters lost in space: hemispace dependent handwriting errors.

Although handwriting is a daily life activity commonly attributed to the left hemisphere in the majority of right-handers, it is also known to require attentional and spatial mechanisms that rely on right hemispheric processing. The underlying spatial organization of handwriting in patients with right brain damage remains unresolved. Here we show in a patient with circumscribed right superior parietal damage that handwriting systematically depends on the hand's position in space with respect to her body-midline.