It's actually an interesting basis for qualifying the disparity between the TPN and DMN, for there is a quantitative metric of penile blood volume as a proxy to arousal (empirical measure), and then the subjective metric of purported arousal induced by the "stimulus" (moral truth). It certainly is a great example of the existence of two forms of "truth."
Request PDF on ResearchGate | Hebephilia: Quintessence of Diagnostic Pretextuality | Hebephilia is an archaic term used to describe adult sexual attraction to adolescents. Prior to the advent of contemporary sexually violent predator laws, the term was not found in any dictionary or formal...
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In a subsequent study, Freund confirmed the normalcy of sexual arousal to adolescents. His subjects were 48 young Czech soldiers, all presumed to be ‘‘normal’’ and heterosexual in orientation. He showed the men pictures of children (ages 4–10 years old), adolescents (ages 12–16), and adults (ages 17–36). As expected, most of the heterosexual men were sexually aroused by photos of both adult and adolescent females. They were not aroused by pictures of males of any age, and were aroused at an intermediate level by pictures of children (Freund & Costell, 1970).
Bennett, P.; Lowe, R.; Petrova, H. (2015). “Heterosexual Men’s Ratings of Sexual Attractiveness of Adolescent Girls: A Cross-Cultural Analysis,” Archives of Sexual Behavior, in press. A…
philiaresearch.wordpress.com
A new study of Bulgarian men has replicated a previous 2013 experiment on British men. In both studies, the same photographs of adolescent girls (Tanner stages 3-4) were shown to one group of men labelled as age 14-15, and a different set of men labelled as age 16-17. Subjects reported more sexual attraction when the photographs were labelled as 16-17. The researchers conclude:
[T]he consistent finding that the same photographs of younger females, but with different age labels, were assigned significantly different levels of attractiveness suggests that cognitive factors beyond biologically driven sexual attraction were involved in making these ratings. In all the three samples, apparently younger girls were rated as less attractive than older girls despite being the same photographs. We hypothesize that this difference reflects some self-censoring mechanism involved in making such judgments. This may involve a form of comparison between participants’ own sexual attraction to the individual girl and the likely social norms surrounding this judgment.
This finding has now been replicated across four samples, including one that is yet to be reported.
en.wikipedia.org
Conventional
The conventional level of moral reasoning is typical of adolescents and adults. To reason in a conventional way is to judge the morality of actions by comparing them to society's views and expectations. The conventional level consists of the third and fourth stages of moral development. Conventional morality is characterized by an acceptance of society's conventions concerning right and wrong. At this level an individual obeys rules and follows society's norms even when there are no consequences for obedience or disobedience. Adherence to rules and conventions is somewhat rigid, however, and a rule's appropriateness or fairness is seldom questioned.[7][8][9]
Prior work has established that analytic thinking is associated with disbelief in God, whereas religious and spiritual beliefs have been positively linked to social and emotional cognition. However, social and emotional cognition can be subdivided into ...
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Finally, we have demonstrated that attention to engaging social stimuli not only activates the DMN but also deactivates the TPN. In a subsequent study[30] it was shown that this pattern of DMN activation and TPN deactivation was present for humanizing depictions of individuals, whereas dehumanizing depictions, which are associated with decreased moral concern, either involved decreased activity in the DMN or increased activity in the TPN. Taken together, these findings suggest that we are neurologically constrained from simultaneously exercising moral concern and analytic thinking.
The conflict between science and religion may have its origins in the structure of our brains. To believe in a supernatural god or universal spirit, people appear to suppress the brain network used for analytical thinking and engage the empathetic network. When thinking analytically about the...
www.sciencedaily.com
"These findings," Friedman continued, "are consistent with the philosophical view, espoused by (Immanuel) Kant, according to which there are two distinct types of truth: empirical and moral."
It's really actually useful for this reason, for it serves as a great foundation for numerous experiments. Particularly useful with concurrent fMRI, which seems possible.
The simultaneous acquisition of electroencephalography (EEG) with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is a very promising non-invasive technique for the study of human brain function. Despite continuous improvements, it remains a challenging ...
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
An important class of physiological noise correction methods relies on recording, concurrently with the fMRI acquisition, external cardiac and respiratory signals by means of appropriate sensors, usually a plethysmograph and a respiratory belt, respectively.
We can already predict that the blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) signal of the brain will increase in the DMN if the age is socioculturally "sensitive"; conversely, there will not be such "toggling" from the TPN into the DMN if the age isn't socioculturally sensitive. That is, indeed, what those researchers suggested, but they didn't use the term "conventional moral truth," rather saying:
Bennett, P.; Lowe, R.; Petrova, H. (2015). “Heterosexual Men’s Ratings of Sexual Attractiveness of Adolescent Girls: A Cross-Cultural Analysis,” Archives of Sexual Behavior, in press. A…
philiaresearch.wordpress.com
We hypothesize that this difference reflects some self-censoring mechanism involved in making such judgments. This may involve a form of comparison between participants’ own sexual attraction to the individual girl and the likely social norms surrounding this judgment.
however, this is an expression of conventional moral reasoning;
en.wikipedia.org
Conventional
The conventional level of moral reasoning is typical of adolescents and adults. To reason in a conventional way is to judge the morality of actions by comparing them to society's views and expectations.
I would be interested in coupling it with something like the following;
Perceptual experience consists of an enormous number of possible states. Previous fMRI studies have predicted a perceptual state by classifying brain activity into prespecified categories.
except with it being as the previous ones, with a database of millions of images and then reading the brain waves and matching the nearest image to what is held in the person's visual memory, as opposed to trying to from scratch reconstruct their visual memory. It is actually easier to do it without needing to reconstruct from scratch, and I believe is all that is required. I would use for the database the same images that are presented to them for attractiveness assessment; however, I would have them modified to make the girl artificially look older or younger as compared to how she looked in the picture they were shown.
That addition to the experiment will allow to see if there is actually an arousal difference based on the purported age, or whether the age only varies the purported attractiveness without actually causing an arousal difference. The existent experiment can't clarify whether an actual arousal difference is present based on the age, so it is ambiguous whether the males are actually less aroused based on the purported age. They could actually honestly be reporting their lessened arousal, with their arousal being contingent on the purported age; otherwise, they could have equivalent arousal -- as empirically quantified -- independent of the purported age, with the age simply modifying their purported arousal.
If their actual arousal varies based on the purported age, rather than just their purported arousal, then there are two things I would be interested in. The first is whether the toggling of BOLD signal from the TPN to DMN would be influencing anything; however, ignoring that, I would then be particularly interested in seeing the visual memory reading technique results, to see if the lower purported age is causing them to reference an internal image instead of the external reality. Almost certainly it causes the BOLD signal of the brain to be such that it would indicate this as a possibility, for the DMN is the brain region that accesses internal imagery, whereas the TPN is the region that accesses the external environment.
activity in the DMN is strongly associated with mental imagery that is not directly tied to current perception (“stimulus-independent thought”), which is also a central feature of dreams.
In major depressive disorder (MDD), the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) has been associated with clinical outcome as well as with antidepressant treat…
www.europeanneuropsychopharmacology.com
IPC and VLPFC belong to the ventral attentional network that supports attentional filtering and reorienting towards the environment (Corbetta et al., 2008), and is anti-correlated with the preACC/DMN, involved in self- referential processes ( Fox and Raichle, 2007).
That would explain any actual arousal discrepancy as well; such males would be having arousal responses to an internal image, rather than to the "stimulus" in the external environment. And the memory reading technique should be able to see that a younger image is matched to upon them being asked to recall the "stimulus," but dependent entirely on the purported age, with them matching to the actually presented image in cases where the age is not socioculturally sensitive. I predict that this would be the case; however, I'm not entirely sure.
Another similar experiment that interests me is to see the fMRI of soldiers (or similar) having been wounded such that they lost their penises but (for example) preserved their testicles, to be able to see the way that arousal causes the male brain to change activation patterns without the additional influence of the (sometimes quite significant) blood volume discrepancy caused by erection, which I imagine is going to be in counterposition with the brain (given that oxygenated blood is a valuable and highly demanded resource). Maintaining erection requires filling something up with oxygenated blood that would otherwise be available to other things. I'd like to see how arousal changes fMRI in males separately from the hemodynamic influence of erection competing for oxygenated blood. Then, to take the set of fMRIs from this group of wounded males, and to juxtapose them with another set of fMRIs taken from a group of normal males, so be able to narrow in on the brain regions that have hemodynamic competition with erection. For I predict there will be an anticorrelation, just as there is between the TPN and the DMN.
Increasing preclinical and clinical evidence underscores the strong and rapid antidepressant properties of the glutamate-modulating NMDA receptor antagonist ketamine. Targeting the glutamatergic system might thus provide a novel molecular strategy for antidepressant treatment. Since glutamate is...
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
A prominent feature of the human brain's global architecture is the anticorrelation of default-mode vs. task-positive systems. Here,we show that administration of an NMDA glutamate receptor antagonist, ketamine, disrupted the reciprocal relationship between these systems in terms of task-dependent activation and connectivity during performance of delayed working memory. Furthermore, the degree of this disruption predicted task performance and transiently evoked symptoms characteristic of schizophrenia.
en.wikipedia.org
The
baculum (also
penis bone,
penile bone, or
os penis, or
os priapi[1]) is a
bone found in the
penis of many
placental mammals. It is absent in the
human penis, but present in
the penises of other primates, such as the
gorilla and
chimpanzee.
[2][3]
I know there are other proposed causes of the vestigialization of the baculum in human males; for example, as an honest signal of cardiovascular fitness. However, I would propose a hemodynamic competition for oxygenated blood causing diminished BOLD signal (activation) in brain regions responsible for things such as impulse control, leading to increased sexual aggressiveness and such things, with this being evolutionarily beneficial, especially in the ancestral environment. With intact baculum there is less need for blood displacement; ergo less competition for oxygenated blood; ergo greater impulse control; ergo less evolutionary benefit to be had in some environments. This could be experimentally tested as previously described.
Following from that, it also would potentially allow for detecting drugs that could be useful for some people in reducing their probability of sexual offending, if the drugs can be shown to increase the oxygen reservoir in those hypothetical brain regions in competition with erection for oxygenated blood. There is a caveat though, that increasing oxygenated blood in the brain may cause increased alcohol intoxication, which would have the opposite effect potentially, but it is hard to guess such things without experimental data.
Several pharmaceutical agents are known to exert an effect on cerebral oxygen metabolism and reservoir, including caffeine:
Mapping the pharmacological modulation of brain oxygen metabolism: The effects of caffeine on absolute CMRO2 measured using dual calibrated fMRI.
[...]
We observed significant differences between caffeine and placebo on average across grey matter, with OEF showing an increase of 15.6% (SEM±4.9%, p<0.05) with caffeine, while CBF and CMRO2 showed differences of -30.4% (SEM±1.6%, p<0.01) and -18.6% (SEM±2.9%, p<0.01) respectively with caffeine administration. The reduction in oxygen metabolism found is somehow unexpected, but consistent with a hypothesis of decreased energetic demand, supported by previous electrophysiological studies reporting reductions in spectral power with EEG.
Noopept and the racetams are known to effect this as well; however, I wasn't easily able to find a citation for that, and just went with the first one I could. After doing the previous experiment regarding the males with intact or missing penises though, one could identify the specific brain regions of interest to specifically modulate the oxygen reservoir and metabolism of, with the aim of counterposing any competition with erection for oxygenated blood.
I wonder if any research has already been done on if caffeine has an effect on sexual behaviors. The issue is that I am interested in it separate from alcohol or other such things. And really I am interested not in caffeine per se, but just use it as the first pharmaceutical agent I could find a citation for regarding having an effect on cerebral oxygenation.