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Sex is in the brain, says new research from Stanford

info@nospam.com (angelight) — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 20:44:00 -0500

Source: http://esciencenews.com/articles/2009/03/02/sex.brain.says.new.research.stanford

Published: Monday, March 2, 2009 - 14:21 in Psychology & Sociology

Learn more about: brain activation patterns hypoactive sexual desire lack of sexual desire new research sexual desire disorder stanford university school of medicine

More than 40 percent of women ages 18-59 experience sexual dysfunction, with lack of sexual interest — hypoactive sexual desire disorder, or HSDD — being the most commonly reported complaint, according to medical researchers. While some question the validity of this diagnosis, a multidisciplinary team from the Stanford University School of Medicine is devoted to objective investigation of such problems. Here is a quick briefing on new research on this problem from Bruce Arnow, PhD, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, and Leah Millheiser, MD, clinical assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology and director of the Female Sexual Medicine Program at Stanford Hospital & Clinics.

The question: What role does the brain play in some women's lack of sexual desire?

Background: Studies of factors affecting sexual performance have largely focused on men, and on physiology of the body rather than the brain. But the brain, rather than peripheral organs, may play the key role in female sexual dysfunction.

The study: The trial is the first to compare brain-activation patterns of females who have HSDD with those who don't. Sixteen women diagnosed with HSDD, along with 20 normal control subjects, took part in the study. All subjects identified themselves as heterosexual.

The experiment: Subjects were shown erotic video segments interspersed among footage of female sporting events. These segments were separated by intervening tranquil sequences of such subjects as flowers, mountains or ocean waves to bring the women's brains to a resting state between more-active segments. Their brain activity was monitored by functional magnetic-resonance imaging, which allows the activity of different brain regions to be assessed in real time. The women also reported their subjective levels of sexual arousal throughout the viewing. Meanwhile, the researchers also collected objective measurements of the women's level of genital arousal.

The findings: Activity patterns throughout most of the brain were more or less identical among the HSDD and normal groups, but with a few notable exceptions. There was a bigger jump in relative activity in three brain areas of HSDD women — the medial frontal gyrus, right inferior frontal gyrus and bilateral putamen — compared with the control subjects when shown the erotic clips. In another brain area — the bilateral entorhinal cortex — the opposite effect occurred. This finding establishes specific locations in the brain where activity in women with HSDD is altered in comparison with women not reporting this problem.

Discussion: Two of the brain areas where the HSDD women had increased activity (the medial frontal gyrus and right inferior frontal gyrus) have been previously associated with, respectively, heightened attention to one's own and others' mental states, and suppression of one's emotional response. The research suggests that increased attention to one's own responses to erotic stimuli plays some part in the sexual dysfunction. The increased activation in the entorhinal cortex observed in the control subjects may correlate with an improved ability among women with no sexual dysfunction, compared with HSDD women, to lay down emotional memories related to sexual events.

Caveats: Correlation is not cause and effect. The study could be showing how paying too much attention causes inhibition of sexual desire — or how the lack of desire in a sexually charged situation causes heightened self-consciousness.

Bottom line: "The results of this study provide yet another valuable tool for understanding the complexity of female sexual function as it relates to desire," Millheiser said. "The next step is to translate this information into the clinical realm, specifically as it relates to cognitive and pharmacotherapeutic approaches."

Published: The results appeared in the Jan. 23 issue of the journal Neuroscience.
Source: Stanford University Medical Center
© 2009 Eureka! Science News

Is sexual desire entering a recession?

info@nospam.com (angelight) — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 20:44:00 -0500

Read more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7874408.stm

Friday, 13 February 2009

By Susan Quilliam
Relationship psychologist

Valentine's Day, by tradition, is an opportunity for declarations of
love and lust. But will 2009 be different?

Given the economic downturn, is passion too in recession? Or will
couples fling themselves into each other's arms to compensate for
their inability to spend, spend, spend?

Professor Helen Fisher, of Rutgers University, holds this latter
theory.

The sheer stress of money worries in general, and fear of redundancy
in particular will, she argues, elevate levels of the chemical
dopamine in the brain - and dopamine is associated with romantic
love.

"Times of stress can trigger feelings of attraction - quite simply,
you're more susceptible," she said.

Professor Fisher's theories are based on a classic 1974 study by
Dutton and Aron - in which male subjects walking across a dangerous-
seeming bridge were found to be more likely to fall for an attractive
woman researcher.

They are currently being reinforced by a flurry of less academic
reports.

Old men chasing young women: A good thing

info@nospam.com (angelight) — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 20:44:00 -0500

Source: http://www.africancrisis.co.za/Article.php?ID=41455

Date Posted: Friday 16-Jan-2009
It turns out that older men chasing younger women contributes to human longevity and the survival of the species, according to new findings by researchers at Stanford and the University of California-Santa Barbara.

Evolutionary theory says that individuals should die of old age when their reproductive lives are complete, generally by age 55 in humans, according to demographer Cedric Puleston, a doctoral candidate in biological sciences at Stanford. But the fatherhood of a small number of older men is enough to postpone the date with death because natural selection fights life-shortening mutations until the species is finished reproducing.

"Rod Stewart and David Letterman having babies in their 50s and 60s provide no benefit for their personal survival, but the pattern [of reproducing at a later age] has an effect on the population as a whole," Puleston said. "It's advantageous to the species if these people stick around. By increasing the survival of men you have a spillover effect on women because men pass their genes to children of both sexes."

"Why Men Matter: Mating Patterns Drive Evolution of Human Lifespan," was published Aug. 29 in the online journal Public Library of Science ONE. Shripad Tuljapurkar, the Morrison Professor of Population Studies at Stanford; Puleston; and Michael Gurven, an assistant professor of anthropology at UCSB, co-authored the study in an effort to understand why humans don't die when female reproduction ends.

Human ability to scale the so-called "wall of death"—surviving beyond the reproductive years—has been a center of scientific controversy for more than 50 years, Puleston said. "The central question is: Why should a species that stops reproducing by some age stick around afterward?" he said. "Evolutionary theory predicts that, over time, harmful mutations that decrease survival will arise in the population and will remain invisible to natural selection after reproduction ends." However, in hunter-gatherer societies, which likely represent early human demographic conditions and mating patterns, one-third of people live beyond 55 years, past the reproductive lifespan for women. Furthermore, life expectancy in today's industrialized countries is 75 to 85 years, with mortality increasing gradually, not abruptly, following female menopause.

Grandmother hypothesis

In 1966, William Hamilton, a British evolutionary biologist, worked out the mathematics describing the "wall of death." Since then, the most popular explanation for why humans don't die by age 55 has been termed the "grandmother hypothesis," which suggests that women enhance the survival of their children and grandchildren by living long enough to care for them and "increasing the success of their genes," Puleston said. However, Hamilton's work has been difficult to express as a mathematical and genetic argument explaining why people live into old age.

Unlike previous research on human reproduction, this study—for the first time—includes data on males, a tweak that allowed the researchers to begin answering the "wall of death" question by matching it to human mortality patterns. According to Puleston, earlier studies looked only at women, because scientists can reproduce good datasets for humans entirely based on information related to female fertility and survival rates.

"Men's fertility is contingent on women's fertility—you have to figure out how they match up. We care about reproduction because that is a currency by which force of selection is counted. If we have not accounted for the entire pattern of reproduction, we may be missing something that's important to evolution."

Men and longevity

In the paper, the researchers analyzed "a general two-sex model to show that selection favors survival for as long as men reproduce." The scientists presented a "range of data showing that males much older than 50 years have substantial realized fertility through matings with younger females, a pattern that was likely typical among early humans." As a result, Puleston said, older male fertility helps to select against damaging cell mutations in humans who have passed the age of female menopause, consequently eliminating the "wall of death."

"Our analysis shows that old-age male fertility allows evolution to breach Hamilton's wall of death and predicts a gradual rise in mortality after the age of female menopause without relying on 'grandmother' effects or economic optimality," the researchers say in the paper.

The scientists compiled longevity and fertility data from two hunter-gatherer groups, the Dobe !Kung of the Kalahari and the Ache of Paraguay, one of the most isolated populations in the world. They also looked at the forager-farmer Yanomamo of Brazil and Venezuela, and the Tsimane, an indigenous group in Bolivia. "They're living a lifestyle that our ancestors lived and their fertility patterns are probably most consistent with our ancestors," Puleston said about the four groups. The study also looked at several farming villages in Gambia and, for comparison, a group of modern Canadians.

In the less developed, traditional societies, males were as much as 5-to-15 years older than their female partners. In the United States and Europe, the age spread was about two years. "It's a universal pattern that in typical marriages men are older than women," Puleston said. "The age gaps vary by culture, but in every group we looked at men start [being reproductive] later. At the end of reproduction, male fertility rates taper off gradually, as opposed to the fairly sharp decline in female fertility by menopause."

Despite small differences based on marriage traditions, all women and most men in the six groups stopped having children by their 50s, the researchers found. But some men, particularly high-status males, continued to reproduce into their 70s. The paper noted that the age gap is most pronounced in societies that favor polygyny, where a man takes several wives, and in gerontocracies, where older men monopolize access to reproductive women. The authors also cite genetic and anthropological evidence that early humans were probably polygynous as well.

Older male fertility also exists in societies supporting serial monogamy, because men are more likely to remarry than women. "For these reasons, we argue that realized male fertility was substantial at ages well past female menopause for much of human history and the result is reflected in the mortality patterns of modern populations," the authors say. "We conclude that deleterious mutations acting after the age of female menopause are selected against … solely as a result of the matings between older males and younger females."

According to Puleston, the "grandmother hypothesis" may be true, but the real pattern of male fertility extends beyond this explanation. "The key question is: Does the population have a greater growth rate if men are reproducing at a later age? The answer is 'yes.' The age of last reproduction gets pushed into the 60s and 70s if you add men to the analysis. Hamilton's approach was right, but in a species where males and females have different reproductive patterns, you need a two-sex model. You can't correctly estimate the force of selection if you leave men out of the picture. As a man myself, it's gratifying to know that men do matter."

Grants from the U.S. National Institute on Aging supported this study.

Police: Allow Sex in All Dutch Parks

info@nospam.com (angelight) — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 20:44:00 -0500

Source: http://www.nisnews.nl/public/080308_2.htm

AMSTERDAM, 08/03/08 - The police's National Diversity Expertise Centre (LECD) wants sex allowed in all public parks in the Netherlands. The police institute has advised the cities to follow the example of Amsterdam, De Telegraaf newspaper reported Friday.

In Amsterdam's Vondelpark, owners of dogs let off the leash can be fined, but sex will shortly be permitted. "Why should we try to maintain something that is actually impossible to maintain, which also causes little bother for others and for a certain group actually signifies much pleasure?" says Paul van Grieken, the responsible Alderman in the Oud-Zuid district of Amsterdam.

Van Grieken confirmed that the plan to tolerate public sex in Vondelpark is part of a draft version of new rules of conduct for the city's best-known park. The regulations are to come into force after the summer. "Of course there are strict rules attached. Thus, condoms must always be cleared away, it must never take place in the neighbourhood of children's playgrounds and the sex must be restricted to the evening and night-time."

The draft memorandum says that fines will be maintained for dogs running around off the leash that, for example, cause nuisance to sunbathing or cycling users of the park. "The research showed that many people find this disturbing," according to the alderman.

LECD is now calling on Rotterdam, The Hague and Utrecht to tolerate 'cruising' gays in all their parks. In a letter to the administrators of the three cities, the police institute says that by regulating sex in public, the safety of homosexuals from 'queer-bashers' can be better guaranteed.

Thus, it says in the recommendations that "officers must not disturb the activities, as long as they do not cause any actual nuisance" and they would "only have to take corrective action if there is a question of actual offensive behaviour that is visible from the public path."

Homosexuals' organisation COC is pleased that the Amsterdam Oud-Zuid district is to be the first to tolerate sex in the Vondelpark. "Cruising is something belonging to all time and banning it does not work anyway. They do it surreptitiously and mostly without others being annoyed by it. But homos at cruising spots are often attacked. By now agreeing rules of behaviour on this, safety can be increased," according to COC Amsterdam chairman Dennis Boutkan.

The G SPOT

info@nospam.com (angelight) — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 16:37:08 -0600

'More sex needed' to boost sperm

info@nospam.com (angelight) — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 16:36:58 -0600

Full story: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7045550.stm

'More sex needed' to boost sperm

The more they get out, the better, the study suggests

Some men should have sex every day to maximise the chances of getting their partner pregnant, researchers say.

It is known for couples with fertility problems to abstain from sex for several days to boost sperm numbers before trying to conceive.

However, the Sydney University team, addressing the American Society for Reproductive Medicine conference, said this could mean poorer quality sperm.

One UK expert said daily sex might be better for men with damaged sperm.

Erotic art traces history of sex

info@nospam.com (angelight) — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 16:36:33 -0600

Erotic art traces history of sex

It's an age-old question. When is art art and when is it simply pornography? A provocative exhibition at the Barbican in central London is helping fuel the debate.

Rembrandt's 1659 work Jupiter and Antiope is part of the exhibition

Seduced - Art and Sex from Antiquity to Now contains works spanning 2000 years, by some of the most famous artists in the world, showing human beings in their most intimate moments.

Kate Bush, the Barbican's head of art, has spent five years putting the collection together.

"It's not about porn. It's a thoughtful exhibition, a celebration of what connects all human beings across time and cultures," says Ms Bush.

The aim of the show is to explore the history of what's accepted as art and to throw light on our current attitudes.

And certainly those attitudes have changed. The first exhibit is a cast of the bronze fig leaf which was made so that Queen Victoria would not be offended by the replica of Michelangelo's statue of David in London's Victoria and Albert Museum.

If you take the Japanese works they are very explicit. But they are sumptuous, beautiful, delicate and refined

Professor Martin Kemp

The visitor then passes a room of pottery showing the antics of Greek and Roman gods and goddesses, through the voluptuous bodies of the Renaissance to contemporary works such as the stylised satirical photographs by Jeff Koons poking fun at the porn industry.

Martin Kemp is one of the show's curators and a professor of history of art at Oxford University.

Full story: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7045772.stm

Sex and Marriage with Robots by 2050

info@nospam.com (angelight) — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 16:36:20 -0600

Forecast: Sex and Marriage with Robots by 2050
By Charles Q. Choi, Special to LiveScience

Source: http://www.livescience.com/technology/071012-robot-marriage.html

Email
Humans could marry robots within the century. And consummate those vows.

"My forecast is that around 2050, the state of Massachusetts will be the first jurisdiction to legalize marriages with robots," artificial intelligence researcher David Levy at the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands told LiveScience. Levy recently completed his Ph.D. work on the subject of human-robot relationships, covering many of the privileges and practices that generally come with marriage as well as outside of it.

At first, sex with robots might be considered geeky, "but once you have a story like 'I had sex with a robot, and it was great!' appear someplace like Cosmo magazine, I'd expect many people to jump on the bandwagon," Levy said.

Pygmalion to Roomba

The idea of romance between humanity and our artistic and/or mechanical creations dates back to ancient times, with the Greek myth of the sculptor Pygmalion falling in love with the ivory statue he made named Galatea, to which the goddess Venus eventually granted life.

This notion persists in modern times. Not only has science fiction explored this idea, but 40 years ago, scientists noticed that students at times became unusually attracted to ELIZA, a computer program designed to ask questions and mimic a psychotherapist.

"There's a trend of robots becoming more human-like in appearance and coming more in contact with humans," Levy said. "At first robots were used impersonally, in factories where they helped build automobiles, for instance. Then they were used in offices to deliver mail, or to show visitors around museums, or in homes as vacuum cleaners, such as with the Roomba. Now you have robot toys, like Sony's Aibo robot dog, or Tickle Me Elmos, or digital pets like Tamagotchis."

In his thesis, "Intimate Relationships with Artificial Partners," Levy conjectures that robots will become so human-like in appearance, function and personality that many people will fall in love with them, have sex with them and even marry them.

"It may sound a little weird, but it isn't," Levy said. "Love and sex with robots are inevitable."

Sex in 5 years

Levy argues that psychologists have identified roughly a dozen basic reasons why people fall in love, "and almost all of them could apply to human-robot relationships. For instance, one thing that prompts people to fall in love are similarities in personality and knowledge, and all of this is programmable. Another reason people are more likely to fall in love is if they know the other person likes them, and that's programmable too."

In 2006, Henrik Christensen, founder of the European Robotics Research Network, predicted that people will be having sex with robots within five years, and Levy thinks that's quite likely. There are companies that already sell realistic sex dolls, "and it's just a matter of adding some electronics to them to add some vibration," he said, or endowing the robots with a few audio responses. "That's fairly primitive in terms of robotics, but the technology is already there."

As software becomes more advanced and the relationship between humans and robots becomes more personal, marriage could result. "One hundred years ago, interracial marriage and same-sex marriages were illegal in the United States. Interracial marriage has been legal now for 50 years, and same-sex marriage is legal in some parts of the states," Levy said. "There has been this trend in marriage where each partner gets to make their own choice of who they want to be with."

"The question is not if this will happen, but when," Levy said. "I am convinced the answer is much earlier than you think."

When and where it'll happen

Levy predicts Massachusetts will be the first jurisdiction to legalize human-robot marriage. "Massachusetts is more liberal than most other jurisdictions in the United States and has been at the forefront of same-sex marriage," Levy said. "There's also a lot of high-tech research there at places like MIT."

Although roboticist Ronald Arkin at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta does not think human-robot marriages will be legal anywhere by 2050, "anything's possible. And just because it's not legal doesn't mean people won't try it," he told LiveScience.

"Humans are very unusual creatures," Arkin said. "If you ask me if every human will want to marry a robot, my answer is probably not. But will there be a subset of people? There are people ready right now to marry sex toys."

The main benefit of human-robot marriage could be to make people who otherwise could not get married happier, "people who find it hard to form relationships, because they are extremely shy, or have psychological problems, or are just plain ugly or have unpleasant personalities," Levy said. "Of course, such people who completely give up the idea of forming relationships with other people are going to be few and far between, but they will be out there."

Ethical questions

The possibility of sex with robots could prove a mixed bag for humanity. For instance, robot sex could provide an outlet for criminal sexual urges. "If you have pedophiles and you let them use a robotic child, will that reduce the incidence of them abusing real children, or will it increase it?" Arkin asked. "I don't think anyone has the answers for that yet—that's where future research needs to be done."

Keeping a robot for sex could reduce human prostitution and the problems that come with it. However, "in a marriage or other relationship, one partner could be jealous or consider it infidelity if the other used a robot," Levy said. "But who knows, maybe some other relationships could welcome a robot. Instead of a woman saying, 'Darling, not tonight, I have a headache,' you could get 'Darling, I have a headache, why not use your robot?'"

Arkin noted that "if we allow robots to become a part of everyday life and bond with them, we'll have to ask questions about what's going to happen to our social fabric. How will they change humanity and civilization? I don't have any answers, but I think it's something we need to study. There's a real potential for intimacy here, where humans become psychologically and emotionally attached to these devices in ways we wouldn't to a vibrator."

Levy is currently writing a paper on the ethical treatment of robots. When it comes to sex and love with robots, "the ethical issues on how to treat them are something we'll have to consider very seriously, and they're very complicated issues," Levy said.

© 2007 Imaginova Corp. All rights reserved.

Women See 'Good Mate" Traits in Effeminate Men

info@nospam.com (angelight) — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 16:36:02 -0600

Source:
http://www.livescience.com/health/070807_macho_men.html

Women See 'Good Mate' Traits in Effeminate Men
By Andrea Thompson, LiveScience Staff Writer

posted: 07 August 2007 07:02 pm ET

A face computer-graphically manipulated to look more feminine (top left), more masculine (top right), less healthy (bottom left) and more healthy (bottom right). Credit: Copyright of PerceptionLab.

Women see the traits that make a good husband in male faces that tend toward female, a new study finds.

Researchers asked 400 British men and women to judge digitally altered pictures of male faces shown without any hair, ears, neck, shoulder or clothing visible and made to look more masculine or feminine.

Two male faces, one more masculine and one more feminine, were presented side by side and the participants were asked to select the face they thought showed more of particular traits including dominance, ambition, wealth, faithfulness, commitment, parenting ability and warmth.

Faces with more masculine features (such as a square jaw, larger nose and smaller eyes), were judged to me more dominant, less faithful, worse parents and as having less warm personalities than those with more feminine features (such as fuller lips, wide eyes and thinner, more curved eyebrows).

"This research shows a high amount of agreement between women about what they see, personality wise, when asked to 'judge a book by its cover'," said lead author Lynda Boothroyd of Durham University in the United Kingdom.

"They may well use that impression of someone to decide whether or not to engage with that person," Boothroyd added. "That decision-making process all depends on what a woman is looking for in a relationship at that time of her life."

Another recent study found that women who were in the fertile stage of their menstrual cycle preferred more masculine-looking males for short-term relationships, but more feminine-looking males while they were less fertile.

Other studies have also found a link between a male's perceived manliness and his desirability to women as a long-term partner.

The apparent healthiness of the faces in the new study, published in the current issue of the journal Personality and Individual Differences, also played a factor in desirability. Those faces that had better complexions were seen as more desirable in terms of all the personality traits.

"Our results contradict claims that machismo denotes fitness and disease immunity," said David Perrett of the University of St Andrews in Scotland. "Masculinity may buy you dominance but not necessarily tip-top physical condition. Instead, women see a healthy guy as the source of wealth, and fit for family life."