• Thirunavukkarasu Sundaram, Gwang-Woo Jeong, Tae-Hoon Kim, Gwang-Won Kim, Han-Su Baek, and Heoung-Keun Kang.
• Department of Biomedical Engineering, Chonnam National University Hospital, Chonnam National University Medical School, Gwangju, Korea.
• Korean J Radiol. 2010 May 1; 11 (3): 278-85.

ObjectiveTo assess the dynamic activations of the key brain areas associated with the time-course of the sexual arousal evoked by visual sexual stimuli in healthy male subjects.Materials And MethodsFourteen right-handed heterosexual male volunteers participated in this study. Alternatively combined rest period and erotic video visual stimulation were used according to the standard block design. In order to illustrate and quantify the spatiotemporal activation patterns of the key brain regions, the activation period was divided into three different stages as the EARLY, MID and LATE stages.ResultsFor the group result (p < 0.05), when comparing the MID stage with the EARLY stage, a significant increase of the brain activation was observed in the areas that included the inferior frontal gyrus, the supplementary motor area, the hippocampus, the head of the caudate nucleus, the midbrain, the superior occipital gyrus and the fusiform gyrus. At the same time, when comparing the EARLY stage with the MID stage, the putamen, the globus pallidus, the pons, the thalamus, the hypothalamus, the lingual gyrus and the cuneus yielded significantly increased activations. When comparing the LATE stage with the MID stage, all the above mentioned brain regions showed elevated activations except the hippocampus.ConclusionOur results illustrate the spatiotemporal activation patterns of the key brain regions across the three stages of visual sexual arousal.

21 keywords...

hide…