Feasibility of functional neuroimaging to understand adolescent women's sexual decision making
Open accessAbstract
Purpose For young women, new sexual experiences normatively increase after puberty and coincide with extensive changes to brain regions governing self-regulation of risk behavior. These neurodevelopmental changes could leave some young women vulnerable for negative sexual outcomes, including sexually transmitted infection and unintended pregnancy. We evaluated the feasibility of using functional neuroimaging to understand the sexual decision making of adolescent women.Methods Adolescent women (N = 14; 14-15 years) completed enrollment interviews, a neuroimaging task gauging neural activation to appetitive stimuli, and 30 days of prospective diaries following the scan characterizing daily affect and sexual behaviors. Descriptive and inferential statistics assessed the association between imaging and behavioral data.Results Young women were highly compliant with neuroimaging and diary protocol. Neural activity in a cognitive-affective network, including prefrontal and anterior cingulate regions, was significantly greater during low-risk decisions. Compared with other decisions, high-risk sexual decisions elicited greater activity in the anterior cingulate, and low-risk sexual decision elicited greater activity in regions of the visual cortex. Young women's sexual decision ratings were linked to their sexual history characteristics and daily self-reports of sexual emotions and behaviors.Conclusions It is feasible to recruit and retain a cohort of female participants to perform a functional magnetic resonance imaging task focused on making decisions about sex, on the basis of varying levels of hypothetical sexual risk, and to complete longitudinal prospective diaries following this task. Preliminary evidence suggests that risk level differentially impacts brain activity related to sexual decision making in these women, which may be related to past and future sexual behaviors.
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Studies using a sexual risk framework have done little to expand our understanding of normative sexual development trajectories.
“Studies using a sexual risk framework have helped to identify some of the underlying neural correlates associated with health-harming sexual decision-making, but, unfortunately, these studies have done little to expand our understanding of normative sexual development trajectories.”
From Becoming a sexual being: The “elephant in the room” of adolescent brain development (2017) · cites this paper as Hensel et al., 2015
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References 44 · Cited by 12
- Authors
- Hensel, D. J., Hummer, T. A., Acrurio, L. R., James, T. W., & Fortenberry, J. D.
- Affiliations
- Indiana University School of Medicine (US)
- Indiana University Indianapolis (US)
- National Institutes of Health (US)
- Indiana University Bloomington (US)
- Corresponding author
- Hensel, Devon J.
- Venue
- Journal of Adolescent Health
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2015-04
- Volume
- 56
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 389-395
- ISSN
- 1054-139X (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC4794319
- OpenAlex
- W1997211038
- Cited by
- 12
- References
- 44
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2023: 1 · 2022: 1 · 2021: 1 · 2020: 1 · 2018: 2 · 2016: 2 · 2015: 3
- FWCI
- 4.27
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- Journal of Adolescent Health (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (acceptedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- IUScholarWorks (Indiana University) (submittedVersion)
- Purdue University Indianapolis (Indiana University) (submittedVersion)
- Author eBooks
- Funders
- National Institutes of Health (UL1TR001108, UL1TR000006)
- National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (TR-000006)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › General Health Professions › Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Sexuality, Behavior, and Technology
- Keywords
- adolescent sexual decision-making, adolescent women, sexual risk behavior, brain development, functional MRI, anterior cingulate cortex, prefrontal cortex, visual cortex, sexual emotions, sexual behavior, sexually transmitted infections, unintended pregnancy
- MeSH terms
- Adolescent, Brain, Decision Making, Feasibility Studies, Female, Humans, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Risk-Taking, Sexual Behavior, Functional Neuroimaging
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