Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University Hospital Leipzig, Semmelweisstr. 10, 04103, Leipzig, Germany.
Department of Biology, University of Leipzig, 04103, Leipzig, Germany.
Eur Arch Psychiatry Clin Neurosci. 2023 Sep;273(6):1295-1306. doi: 10.1007/s00406-022-01501-w. Epub 2022 Nov 12.
The hypothalamus regulates sexual behavior and is simultaneously associated with aggression and violence. Consequently, this brain region is relevant in research of pedophilia and child sexual offenses (CSO). The distinction between these two phenomena is of great importance and was the object of consideration of this study. We analyzed exclusively men, including 73 pedophilic offenders who committed CSO, an equal number of people with pedophilia but without such offenses, and 133 non-pedophilic, non-offending subjects who formed the control group. All data were collected in a multicenter in vivo study and analyzed using a semi-automated segmentation algorithm for 3-Tesla magnetic resonance images. Men with pedophilia who committed CSO on average had a 47 mm smaller hypothalamus per side than people without committed CSO. This effect was driven by both the group of non-offending people with pedophilia and the control group. By contrast, the exploratory comparison of pedophilic persons without CSO with the control group showed no significant difference. The present study demonstrates a deviant hypothalamic structure as a neurobiological correlate of CSO in pedophiles, but not in people with pedophilia who have not committed CSO. Thus, it strengthens the argument to distinguish between sexual offending and paraphilic sexual preferences.
下丘脑调节性行为，同时与攻击和暴力有关。因此，这个大脑区域与恋童癖和儿童性犯罪（CSO）的研究相关。这两种现象的区别非常重要，也是本研究考虑的对象。我们专门分析了男性，包括 73 名犯有 CSO 的恋童癖罪犯，以及数量相等的有恋童癖但没有此类犯罪的人，以及 133 名非恋童癖、非犯罪的对照组。所有数据均在一项多中心体内研究中收集，并使用 3T 磁共振成像的半自动分割算法进行分析。平均而言，犯有 CSO 的恋童癖罪犯每侧的下丘脑要小 47 毫米。这种影响是由没有犯有 CSO 的恋童癖者和对照组共同驱动的。相比之下，对没有 CSO 的恋童癖者与对照组进行的探索性比较显示没有显著差异。本研究表明，异常的下丘脑结构是恋童癖者 CSO 的神经生物学相关因素，但不是没有犯有 CSO 的恋童癖者的相关因素。因此，它加强了区分性犯罪和性偏好障碍的论点。
