14 DAY TRIAL // People do not take a risk with pedophiles, as they suffer from the most detested sexual deviation. About 89,000 American children were sexually abused in 2002 and many cases actually go unreported.
"Pedophilia" ("child affinity" in Old Greek) represents impulsive desires and behaviors targeting sexual acts with a child and this occurs over a period of at least six months.
Pedophilia is a major public concern and it does not respond well to treatment and among convicted pedophiles, especially those attracted to boys, the recidivism rate is high, as not all pedophiles respond to psychotherapy.
Pedophilia seems to be caused by a combination of genetic and environmental factors. Pedophiles are very likely to have been victims of violence and sex abuse as children, in a victim-to-perpetrator cycle.
In other cases, pedophiles experience such deep-seated sexual anxieties that they cannot develop into normal sexuality. Pedophiles indeed present different action patterns in the frontal lobe cortex compared to normal men, a brain region critical for impulse control. Biological causes can be involved, like brain trauma before six years old, accidents also associated with lower intelligence and educational level (of course, not every early brain trauma causes pedophilia).
Scientists also believe there could be genes provoking brain defects that render the individuals more prone to pedophilia.
Researches found higher rates of pedophilia inside some "pedophile" family members than among the families of nonpedophiles. Still, the brain mechanisms causing pedophilia are not clearly known.
A new research shows for the first time that brain circuits connected to normal sexuality are non-functional in pedophiles. The American team employing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) found that pedophilic patients presented low activation of the hypothalamus, the most important brain nucleus linked to sexual function, regulating physiologic arousal and hormone release, compared to healthy individuals watching sexually arousing images of adults.
Also, low activity in the frontal cortex of the pedophiles was confirmed. Thus, when watching erotic images of adults, the brains of the pedophiles had reduced activity in the pleasure center, revealing a diminished sexual interest for normal sex.
"The ability to intervene rationally in this disorder is limited by shortcomings in our understanding of its neurobiology. The findings provide clues to the complexity of this disorder, [and] this deficit may predispose individuals who are vulnerable to pedophilia to seek other forms of stimulation. It is currently unknown whether this pattern of brain activation is a risk factor for the development of pedophilia or a consequence of their pedophilic sexual experiences," said Dr. John Krystal, Editor of Biological Psychiatry and affiliated with both Yale University School of Medicine and the VA Connecticut Healthcare System, who calls for further research.
"[These findings] may open the door for better understanding the neurobiology of this disorder which is of forensic, criminal and public concern. Our results may thus be seen as the first step towards establishing a neurobiology of pedophilia which ultimately may contribute to the development of new and effective means of therapies for this debilitating disorder." said co-author Dr. Georg Northoff.
The new research explains why, even when successfully treated, most pedophiles have to struggle to restrain their predilections for the rest of their lives.