Centre for Integrative Psychiatry, Institute for Sexual Medicine and Forensic Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, UKSH, 24105, Kiel, Germany.
Department of Psychology, Christian-Albrechts-University Kiel, 24118, Kiel, Germany.
Sci Rep. 2024 Jul 16;14(1):16385. doi: 10.1038/s41598-024-65572-6.
Previous fMRI research found increased brain responses in men with pedophilic interest to non-sexual pictures of child and animal faces. This raised the question of whether an aberrant nurturing system could be linked to pedophilia. To further explore this hypothesis, 20 pedohebephilic and 23 teleiophilic men performed a target detection task with adult versus infant human and animal faces, which measured selective attention towards the baby schema by comparing reaction times to infant versus adult targets that were presented amongst distractors of the other category. Since the response to baby schema can be influenced by steroid hormones, saliva samples were additionally collected to determine endogenous testosterone, progesterone, estradiol and cortisol. Contrary to expectations, all men did not react faster to infant than adult faces. Yet, pedohebephilic men were more distracted by infant's faces than teleiophilic men. Pedohebephilic men with higher testosterone were faster in orienting attention to infant targets in the context of adult distractors. This association was not observed in teleiophilic men. Our results support the idea of an overactive nurturing system in pedophilia, which may be influenced by the endogenous testosterone level.
先前的 fMRI 研究发现，有恋童癖倾向的男性对儿童和动物非性化面孔的大脑反应增强。这就提出了一个问题，即异常的养育系统是否与恋童癖有关。为了进一步探索这一假说，20 名恋童癖和 23 名性成熟癖男性进行了一项带有成人和婴儿面孔的目标检测任务，通过比较对婴儿目标的反应时间与在分心物为另一类别时对成人目标的反应时间，来衡量对婴儿模式的选择性注意。由于对婴儿模式的反应可能受到类固醇激素的影响，因此还额外收集了唾液样本以确定内源性睾酮、孕酮、雌二醇和皮质醇。与预期相反，并非所有男性对婴儿面孔的反应都比成人面孔快。然而，恋童癖男性比性成熟癖男性更容易被婴儿面孔分心。在有成人分心物的情况下，睾丸激素水平较高的恋童癖男性对婴儿目标的注意力定向更快。在性成熟癖男性中未观察到这种关联。我们的结果支持恋童癖中存在过度活跃的养育系统的观点，而这可能受到内源性睾丸激素水平的影响。
