Mindful Attention Produces Different Responses to Sexual Orientation Consistent and Inconsistent Stimuli.
By John M. de Castro, Ph.D.
“Sometimes people need to play around with the idea of [something] before they can really get a sense of whether this is something that they want to bring into their real-world sex life, so fantasy can be super helpful in that way,” Vanessa Marin
Sexual fantasies are nearly universal occurring in both men and women across cultures. But, the purpose of these fantasies or their effects upon sexual behavior and the well-being of the individual have not been well studied. Most heterosexual fantasies are orientation consistent involving fantasized interactions with members of the opposite sex. But occasionally orientation inconsistent fantasies occur involving fantasies about individuals of the same sex. It is not known what are the effects of these orientation consistent and inconsistent fantasies.
In today’s Research News article “Understanding heterosexual women’s erotic flexibility: the role of attention in sexual evaluations and neural responses to sexual stimuli.” (See summary below or view the full text of the study at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7308660/ ) Dickinson and colleagues recruited single heterosexual women between the ages of 18 to 35 years. The women evaluated 30 second film clips of male actors masturbating, female actors masturbating, male actors engaging in non-sexual activity and female actors engaging in non-sexual activity. After each clip they answered to what extent they found the clips sexually arousing and to what extent they felt distracted? They also underwent brain scanning with functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) while watching the videos with mindful attention and not.
They found that when practicing mindful attention, the women rated the orientation consistent images significantly more sexually arousing and they were less distracted than the neutral images. On the other hand, when practicing mindful attention, the women rated the orientation inconsistent images significantly less sexually arousing and they were more distracted. When viewing sexual stimuli, the women’s brains showed significant activation in brain areas that are involved in control of the physiology (autonomic nervous system), attention, appraisal, tactual sensitivity, and motor imagery.
The findings demonstrate that women react differently to orientation consistent erotic imagery that to orientation inconsistent imagery finding the consistent imagery more arousing and less distracting. These differences are amplified with mindful attention. They also show that the neural responses to the stimuli differ between consistent and inconsistent orientation stimuli suggesting that the attentional and visual processing areas of the women’s brains are activated by consistent but not inconsistent orientation erotic imagery.
These findings suggest that women are not erotically flexible. Erotic imagery consistent with their sexual orientation were found to be more arousing psychologically and in brain processing than erotic imagery inconsistent with their orientation. They also suggest that mindfulness amplifies their responses. These types of studies begin to unravel the physical and psychological responses underlying sexuality toward the opposite sex in heterosexual women. These types of responses may support human reproduction and perpetuation of the species.
So, mindful attention produces different responses to sexual orientation consistent and inconsistent stimuli.
“Sex therapists concur, encouraging lovers to observe their erotic thoughts and fantasies non-judgmentally, no matter what their content, and then gently let go of them as lovers return to focusing on giving and receiving pleasure. Just as random thoughts during meditation don’t mean anything, neither do the vast majority of thoughts and fantasies during sex.” – Michael Castleman
CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies
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Study Summary
Dickenson, J. A., Diamond, L., King, J. B., Jenson, K., & Anderson, J. S. (2020). Understanding heterosexual women’s erotic flexibility: the role of attention in sexual evaluations and neural responses to sexual stimuli. Social cognitive and affective neuroscience, 15(4), 447–465. https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsaa058
Abstract
Many women experience desires, arousal and behavior that run counter to their sexual orientation (orientation inconsistent, ‘OI’). Are such OI sexual experiences cognitively and neurobiologically distinct from those that are consistent with one’s sexual orientation (orientation consistent, ‘OC’)? To address this question, we employed a mindful attention intervention—aimed at reducing judgment and enhancing somatosensory attention—to examine the underlying attentional and neurobiological processes of OC and OI sexual stimuli among predominantly heterosexual women. Women exhibited greater neural activity in response to OC, compared to OI, sexual stimuli in regions associated with implicit visual processing, volitional appraisal and attention. In contrast, women exhibited greater neural activity to OI, relative to OC, sexual stimuli in regions associated with complex visual processing and attentional shifting. Mindfully attending to OC sexual stimuli reduced distraction, amplified women’s evaluations of OC stimuli as sexually arousing and deactivated the superior cerebellum. In contrast, mindfully attending to OI sexual stimuli amplified distraction, decreased women’s evaluations of OI stimuli as sexually arousing and augmented parietal and temporo-occipital activity. Results of the current study constrain hypotheses of female erotic flexibility, suggesting that sexual orientation may be maintained by differences in attentional processing that cannot be voluntarily altered.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7308660/