Sartorius Alexander, Ruf Matthias, Kief Christine, Demirakca Traute, Bailer Josef, Ende Gabriele, Henn Fritz A, Meyer-Lindenberg Andreas, Dressing Harald
Central Institute of Mental Health, J5, 68159, Mannheim, Germany.
Eur Arch Psychiatry Clin Neurosci. 2008 Aug;258(5):271-7. doi: 10.1007/s00406-008-0782-2. Epub 2008 May 26.
Despite considerable public interest research in neurobiological correlates of pedophilia is scarce. Since amygdala activation is central for emotional valuation, arousal, and salience, we investigated the activation profile of this structure in 10 male subjects with pedophilia (exclusively attracted to boys), all convicted sex-offenders and sentenced to forensic psychiatric treatment along with ten male heterosexual matched controls. We used a sexually non-explicit functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) paradigm with images of men, women, boys or girls randomly embedded in neutral target/non-target geometrical symbols. We applied statistical parametric mapping (SPM2) and SPSS 14 for image processing and analysis. While controls activated significantly less to pictures of children compared to adults, the activation profile was reversed in subjects with pedophilia, who exhibited significantly more activation to children than adults. The highest activation was observed for boys in the patient group, and for women in control participants. Our data show enhanced activation to children's pictures even in an incidental context and suggest the provocative hypothesis that a normally present mechanism for reduced emotional arousal for children relative to adults is reversed in pedophilia, suggesting a neural substrate associated with deviant sexual preference in this condition. More extensive research in this field would be of benefit for both the victims and the offenders.
尽管公众对恋童癖的神经生物学关联研究有着浓厚兴趣，但相关研究却很匮乏。由于杏仁核激活在情绪评估、唤醒和显著性方面起着核心作用，我们对10名患有恋童癖的男性受试者（只对男孩有吸引力）的该结构激活情况进行了研究，这些受试者均为已定罪的性犯罪者，正在接受法医精神病治疗，同时还选取了10名与之匹配的异性恋男性作为对照。我们使用了一种非性暗示的功能性磁共振成像（fMRI）范式，其中男性、女性、男孩或女孩的图像随机嵌入中性目标/非目标几何符号中。我们应用统计参数映射（SPM2）和SPSS 14进行图像处理和分析。与成年人相比，对照组对儿童图片的激活明显较少，而患有恋童癖的受试者的激活情况则相反，他们对儿童图片的激活明显多于成年人。在患者组中，对男孩的激活最高，而在对照组参与者中，对女性的激活最高。我们的数据表明，即使在偶然的情境下，对儿童图片的激活也会增强，并提出了一个具有启发性的假设，即在恋童癖中，相对于成年人，正常情况下存在的一种降低对儿童情绪唤醒的机制发生了逆转，这表明在这种情况下存在与异常性偏好相关的神经基础。在这一领域进行更广泛的研究将对受害者和犯罪者都有益处。
