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The Role of the Anterior Cingulate Cortex in Women?s Sexual Decision Making

1. When rating a high likelihood of engaging in sex with high-risk partners, _________ in activation of the ACC and __________ activation in the pons was observed. Why? (For this question only, please e-mail me your response instead of posting)

2. How do these regions of interest (ACC, Pons, Midbrain, intraparietal sulcus) influence behavior and autonomic arousal? What chemicals, circuits, or brain regions are involved?

3. Can you point out any issues with the methodology of this study? (i.e. What could have been done differently, who was left out, what variables were not considered, ect) Suggest some ways to improve/alter this experiment.

4. Why examine the neural circuitry underlying sexual decision-making? What are the implications of this study?

The regions of interest observed in this study (the ACC, pons, midbrain, and intraparietal sulcus) influence behavior and autonomic arousal in a number of ways. The ACC, as has been discussed, weighs the pros and cons of future decisions and relays this information to the pons so that it may be transformed into appropriate behaviors in the cerebellum. Within the midbrain, the substantia nigra, superior and inferior colliculi, and the periaqueductal gray (PAG) exist, all of which could mediate the behaviors above. The substantia nigra is central to the dopaminergic neuromodulatory system, meaning it could be involved with reward and subsequent strengthening of behaviors including good (or bad) choices in sexual partners. The superior and inferior colliculi play roles in visual and auditory reflexes, respectively, so the superior in particular could have influence upon whether women find men they?ve never seen before attractive or not at first glance. The PAG has a role in defensive behaviors and could be activated when women learn of men?s high-risk sexual records, leading to their decision not to engage in sex with the man to protect themselves. The intraparietal sulcus contains many subregions, all of which have roles involving vision and subsequent processing and behavior, so it probably regulates women?s visual attention to men and how they see them. The locus coeruleus, several of the raphe nuclei, and the pontomesencephalotegmental complex that release norepinephrine, serotonin, and acetylcholine, respectively, also exist within the described areas, and they help modulate mood, voluntary movement, learning, memory formation, and many other things. All of these neuromodulatory systems may influence women?s sexual decision-making by adjusting her responses to a man?s attractiveness and sexual history while keeping her aware of her own past sexual choices.

I know the experiment was looking more specifically at women?s sexual decision-making, but I feel that it would have been beneficial to examine men?s sexual decision-making, as well. The brain areas discussed in the findings may not have been exclusive to women; this is highly doubtful actually, since the brain areas involved in sexual decision-making in women are also used for many other processes that men and women alike engage in. They also left out women in committed relationships. Granted, they would probably indicate consistently lower likelihoods of engaging in sex with the men presented in the study, but it could be observed whether their ACC was activated as much or differently by such conditions to see how being in a relationship affects sexual decision-making. A variable they did not control for was whether the women in the study were looking to be in a relationship at the time. I believe this could drastically alter the results of the study because women not seeking a relationship would probably show less interest overall in the men presented in the study. I think taking some of these things into account could produce a more well-rounded study.

Looking into the neural circuitry of sexual decision-making has obviously turned up some interesting results in that it is not a completely separate process but involves much of the same neurocircuitry as regular decision-making does. This also shows us that sexual decision-making may be a more logical and thought out process than some people seem to think. The implications for this could include development of psychological therapy for nymphomaniacs or a possible correlation to be found between poor non-sexual decision-making and poor sexual decision-making (for instance, if someone habitually makes poor life choices, there could be a good possibility that they make poor choices in sexual partners as well, and this could be detected and avoided through such a correlation).

Decision making is a very interesting field of study, in this week?s article, the researches wanted to determine whether or not the same brain regions were active in sexual decision making as those that are activated in either economic or social decision making. The regions that were found to be activated were the ACC, pons, midbrain, and intraparietal sulcus, consistent with the regions found to be activated in other decision making tasks. The ACC is intimately involved in decision making, and activation in the ACC can indicate both that a decision is being reached as well as how certain the subject may be of that decision. An interesting note is that those with OCD display a decreased amount of glutamate activity in the ACC, possibly accounting for some of their difficulties in decision-making. The midbrain, with all the diffuse modulatory systems (serotonergic, noradrenergic, dopaminergic, cholinergic) clearly has an impact upon a vast array of systems of the brain. One hypothesis of decision making that I read about(called the somatic-marker hypothesis) holds that decisions with uncertain outcomes are often influenced heavily by emotional states, so-called somatic markers (in the orbitomedial PFC) so it?s possible that the modulatory midbrain systems could be part of this interaction between emotional state and decision making elsewhere in the brain. The pons makes up part of the decision making circuit, receiving input from the cortex that it passes to the cerebellum as well as input from the cerebellum which it projects to the thalamus, serving as a sort of relay between the decision making and behavioral actions. Finally, the intraparietal sulcus, in addition to its role in vision, is involved in interpreting the intent of others, which is integral to the sexual decision making task the researchers used.

Aside from the old standby of simply having a larger subject pool, or broadening the study to also examine sexual decision making in men, I think the researchers could have looked at various age groups. I?m curious as to how the decision making would change based upon age, for example, would different activation be observed in women with menopause who do not have to consider unwanted pregnancy in their decision making?

I think the researchers chose to look at the neural circuitry of sexual decision making primarily to determine if there was significant overlap with the circuitry involved in other types of decision making such as social and economic decisions since the areas they activated in the brain were already known. The study, I think, pretty clearly demonstrates that the same pathways are involved regardless of the type of decision making, and while that may perhaps seem less romantic, it is interesting to realize that the same neural processes underlie all decision making. As the researchers noted, their study could help pave the way for interventions for those who make poor sexual choices; they mention the possibility of behavioral reinforcement such as pairing using condoms with rewards (though I?m not sure what sort of rewards would be used) as a means of reinforcing good decision making.

ACC, Pons, Midbrain, intraparietal sulcus were all studied in this experiment to see the impact on women's sexual decisions. As said in the essay, the pons receives and sends many projections to and from the cerebral cortex, cerebellum, and the thalamus which are believed to play an important role in physiological autonomic arousal. The thalamus is very important in relaying sensation to the cerebral cortex. This is probably what helps the women tell if they are aroused when they see the men and play a role in decision making. The ACC is connected with the nucleus accumbens which, as we recently learned, is a key center in reward and pleasure. The nucleus accumbens is closely correlated with dopamine release as well as wants and desires. I believe that this will also play a strong role in determining the sex likelihood of a woman. This "want and desire" will be important in weighing the pros and the cons, therefore showing that the ACC is connected to important circuits of decision making. And as said in former posts, the ACC is closely linked to decision-making in general. One of the IPS's functions is related to visual attention. Because of this, the IPS can play a role in determining the attractiveness of the sexual partners. The IPS can help relay information to help the woman decide if she finds the man attractive and therefore, if it is necessary to carry on processing the high and low risk information.

I definitely agree with Drew on the change in age groups. Obviously if the women have undergone menopause, use of condom may seem much less important and therefore alter how they perceive the risk factors. It would also be interesting to see teenagers (around 16 years old) participate in this study as well. Since brains in teenagers are not fully developed, they are apt to make different decisions. It is well known that many teenagers are engaging in sexual activity as well, though they are not always making "smart" decisions (think "Teen Mom" and "16 and Pregnant"). Do these same areas become equally activated? I think it is very pertinent to our culture and I am curious to know if because the brains have not reached the same level of development, if the same systems become activated in decision making.

As both Clementine and Drew said, it is clear that this experiment is trying to determine if sexual decision making and regular decision making use the same circuitry in the brain. I think that it is important to conclude that there is overlap because it can be used almost as a precaution or something. If there are problems in this circuit that cause bad decisions early on in life, perhaps it could be realized so treatment could occur, preventing the people from making choices that could cause the person to end up with disease, a child, or other unwanted problems. Again, since the nucleus accumbens is related to the ACC which is clearly activated, perhaps the person could realize that dopamine is overriding the smarter choice (to abstain from high-risk sex) and end up making a different decision.

The Anterior cingulate cortex is involved with anticipation, decision, and evaluation of the situation presented. In terms of women?s sexual decision making, it plays an important role in weighing the pros and cons of sexual interaction with the male subjects. Part of the ACC is connected to the amygdala, nucleus accumbens, hypothalamus and anterior insula. Suggesting that there is an emotional motivation aspect that influences the decision made. We see that with it?s activation when high risk males are evaluated, this is consistent with previous results of high activation of the ACC when encountering a high-risk financial decision. Their response time also corresponded with an increased processing effort, analysis, and positive appraisal of stimuli during decision making. What this tells us about the ACC in women?s sexual decision is that it functions to weigh the pros and cons of a high risk situation by conversing with the amygdala, NAc, hypothalamus, and thus able to decide whether the reward of sexual gratification and social bonding with the male partner will outweight the potential risk of STI and pregnancy.

The ACC is divided into the ventral and dorsal areas, the ventral is connected with amygdala, NAc, hypothalamus, and anterior insula. The dorsal is connected with prefrontal, parietal, and various motor cortices. The midbrain joins the pons and the thalamus/hypothalamus. The midbrain have dopaminergic activation and is associated with learning and behavioral reinforcement. The pons connects the cerebrum down to the cerebellum, thus plays as a relay center from higher cortical to the motor behavior. The Intraparietal sulcus is connected to the frontal lobe for motor control. After seeing where all these areas connect, we can see that there are connections within all these regions that can influence how a decision is made and carried out, and also how a decision is recorded for future references in motivational reinforcement toward a certain decision.

I think this study is very hard to do accurately, because sexual decisions in women can vary unpredictably due to many factors: past experiences, region of the country, hormonal balance in the body, influence of alcohol and drugs, environmental cues, and the behavior of the male subject. The environment inside of an fMRI machine with a picture and few facts does not really replicate the native environment in which most women make decisions about male sex partners. I think a better way to do this is to actually recruit female subjects and test them with male actors with varying risk level and attractiveness, and are given specific risk levels. Hook the females up with electrodes that measure brain activity in those regions of interest when they interact with the males to see if the corresponding increase in brain activation accurately matches the risk level of the male they are interacting with.

Looking at neural circuitry of sexual decision-making is important for not only understanding how people choose their mates, thus explaining more about what is attractive and why we have evolved to be attracted to certain features of the opposite sex. Also, this type of decision making when there is a potential risk applies to more than just sexual decision making, but also financial and social bonding. Understanding these areas can potentially lead to the understanding of how decision making in successful species lead to their survival, and has a potential to reverse suicidal thoughts in individuals or maybe contain the decisions that goes inside the head of serial killers.

As discussed earlier, the Midbrain?s reticular activating systems connect to most protions of the brain, facilitating activation of certain regions based on a processed stimulus. therfore, many possible results could occur due to midbrain activation, depending on activation of the dopaminergic substantia nigra or other reticular systems. As other people have noticed, many of theses areas are concordant with visual stimulation such as the colliculis, the intraparietal sulcus, and the pons. This circuit could be responsable for the evaluation of visual attention, resulting in focusing of the eyes to a certain stimulus, namely the attractive man. I?m not sure what the two circuits share, but the reticular activating system and the pons are heavily responsable for sleep/wake cycles, with the RAC being active during waking hours and the pons facilitating REM sleep. Perhaps these two systems, with their activities of increasing the seretonergic, dopaminergic and Ach systems in the cortex could also play a synced up role in providing attention. with the ACC playing a role in blood pressure and heart rate, this could provide a mechanism by whichintense decision making based on things like gambling result in a sympathetic physiological response. It seems to me like these brains areas are less involved in the decision making process and more involved in the immediate response to that decision, such as heart rate change and shift in focus. The ACC, with its role in economic reward and anticipation is the most highly involved in the actual decision making process, with a large input from dopaminergic reward pathays.

First off, they only used 12 women. All of the women were straight, young and essentially single. While this study could provide a good starting point, I think it would be more interesting to change the dependent variable to different types of women instead of multiple pictures of men, to observe whether women of different age groups, sexual orientations, or relationship statuses have different decision making processes. Also, the method by which the women were instructed to chose men they would have sexual relations with was based purely on visual fondness. This completely negates any sort of personality traits that may influence the decision making process and disregards the females personal preference for male attractiveness. not only does it disregard these aspects, but the women were given no instruction s to the personality or overall attractiveness of the men and simply allowed to imagine outside forces themselves. this can produce differing opinions on attractiveness among women and does not create a consistent scale for decision making among several people. This could be improved by using multiple real men and controls, which is more difficult, but would allow for evaluation based more than on a single visual component. Forcing the women in the study to make a decision based solely off of visual attractiveness seems like an incomplete way of assessing female sexual decision making.

Understanding any decision making process has huge social and economic implications if successfully implemented into marketing campaigns. Understanding why women make decisions provides an extremely valuable tool for companies trying to sell products to them. This isn?t a new concept on a macroscopic scale, but observing the neuroscience behind it provides understanding into the similarities between sexual decision making and other, better understood decision making processes. This is simply from a crude business approach, because if we discover that most decision making processes are essentially the same, then designing marketing strategies that are focused on a few consistent factors would be relatively easy.

From a neuroscience approach, understanding that two seemingly different processes use similar neural circuitry is a fascinating concept that can open the doors into more research into the possible similarities between other seemingly different behavioural processes. Its quite amazing the overlap and connectivity that these systems have, experiments like this bring us closer to understanding the fascinating systems that exist in our brain.

Responses to high versus low-risk sexual partners varied between the regions of interest involved in this study. Activity within the ACC, for example, increased with high-risk partners and was positively correlated to the likelihood sex. Rupp et al. theorized that this increase in activity was due to the high-risk status increasing the necessary processing effort (one could say the extent of activation demonstrates how hard of a choice the decision was). Several other studies have indicated that the ACC is involved in monitoring conflict and it plays role in reward-based learning, also explaining these results. Personally, I wonder if the emotions associated with high risk partners are what?s causing the ACC?s increased activity in these causes. We discussed in class, the cingulate cortex is involved in the limbic system (Papez circuit). Perhaps the increased fear/worry of the STDs/unwanted pregnancies associated with higher risk partners is partially responsible for the increased ACC activity.

Conversely the midbrain experience increased activity when the women were evaluating men of low-risk, and response times where positively correlated to the midbrain?s level of activation. This possibly indicates the involvement of a dopaminergic pathway such as the mesocorticolimbic dopamine system, which ?rewards? the brain for making the wise, safe choice of a low-risk partner. The Pons similarly had increased activity when evaluating low-risk men, and its activation generally resulted in more inhibited sexual responses. The neuroanatomy of this region, with its multitude of neuronal projections to and from the thalamus, cerebellum and brainstem suggests the pons acts as a relay station in this decision-making process. We?ve previously discussed the cholinergic complexes that dominate this region of the brain, thus I would not be surprised if this response was mediated by ACh. However, obviously, this would require further research to verify.

The main source of error within this particular study, was undoubtedly the low number of female subjects used, which even Rupp et al. acknowledged. The study would greatly benefit from a larger subject pool. Additionally the methods section of this paper failed to fully explain how women were recruited for this trial. Where did they pick these women from? Was it a wide social demographic or did they just choose the first 12 women who, let?s say, walked into a particular GYN?s office (which could cause sampling error as all the women of this example would have health insurance?i.e. a certain level of wealth?and a certain level of sexual education, which could greatly affect their reaction to a high-risk partner). Moreover, the study left out a variety of races. If you want to examine the neural activity of sexual decision making in the general populace then more races need to be analyzed. This does introduce yet other variable though. Thus researchers could institute a racial control and only examine one ethnicity per study. They should attempt to make the subjects consistent in demographics to the population, or consistent with a set control.

The implications of this study do hold a high value. Its results indicate that the neural circuitry for sexual decision-making highly coincides with that of financial and social-decision making. Thus, treatments for disorders of the latter two might remedy problems with sexual-decision making as well, be it via medication or psychotherapy. Knowledge of this circuitry could eventually aid in the prevention of unplanned pregnancies, lessen the likelihood of contracting STDs, or perhaps even decrease the chances that someone would return to an abusive, sexual relationship. These ?maladies? can have incredibly long lasting negative affects on a person?s life and psyche. Hence it?s vital that we understand why we do what we do, why we make these decisions.

In regards to the regions looked at in this study that influence behavior, The ACC plays less of a role in arousal and more in the initial decision. It weighs cost/benefit analysis which would be more associated with behavior and intent to act. This is also exemplified in the fact that it was more active when contemplating high risk and not low risk men. The Pons integrates the forebrain to the cerebellum. This allows for the integration of high cortical areas with actions such as eye movement, facial expression/sensitization and posture. All of which can reflect an arousal state unconsciously. The purpose being to reciprocate attraction. The midbrain is a mess of areas that utilize a number of modulatory systems. The presence of dopaminergic systems indicates motivational behavior is activates, probably as a connection with arousal. Finally the intraparietal sulcus plays a role in integrating the visual stimuli into behavior.

As stated by many above, the idea of examining a pool of male test subjects seems to be a big area of improvement. Likewise a large testing pool could be used. However, this test was very focused on observing the regions involved with decision making alone. So, there are many variables such as ethnicity, history and culture that can effect attraction, I would imagine these would be less useful in decision making. The major factor I would change would be the information background on the men (or partner depending on the testing gender). How does the decision factor in with sexual performance, employment and leisure activity. Also, a look at the hippocampus in memory activation would be nice. Some stimuli may be less arousing due to familial features or past encounters.

I think this study into the circuitry of sexual decision making has been well described above. The idea that sexual decisions utilize similar circuitry to other types of decision making illuminates the fact that sex is a bit more complicated than just action. It also serves to open the door to the idea that sexual attraction is computed in the brain to not only infer on the imminent pleasure but also on the possible future pleasures or displeasures, much like any other decisions.

The implications are very limited. While there is a direct correlation between sexual decision making and other life decisions, this test was too focused. Other life decisions, as well as sexual ones, are much different in the
implementation rather than speculation. The data is about theoretical experiences. I think there is definite potential in further research into the idea of the circuitry that finalizes the decision. However, this research definitely aids in the ability to specifically target arousal as a decision making tool in marketing. While not a main directive of the study, I believe other studies could illuminate which factors cause people to take high risk situations.