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. 2023 Mar 21;12(1):278-287.
doi: 10.1556/2006.2023.00008. Print 2023 Mar 30.

Structural brain differences related to compulsive sexual behavior disorder

Per Görts  1 , Josephine Savard  1   2   3 , Katarina Görts-Öberg  2   3 , Cecilia Dhejne  2   3 , Stefan Arver  2   3 , Jussi Jokinen  1   4 , Martin Ingvar  4 , Christoph Abé  4   5
Affiliations

Structural brain differences related to compulsive sexual behavior disorder

Per Görts et al. J Behav Addict. .

Abstract

Background and aims: Compulsive sexual behavior disorder (CSBD) has been included as an impulse control disorder in the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11). However, the neurobiological mechanisms underlying CSBD remain largely unknown, and given previous indications of addiction-like mechanisms at play, the aim of the present study was to investigate if CSBD is associated with structural brain differences in regions involved in reward processing.

Methods: We analyzed structural MRI data of 22 male CSBD patients (mean = 38.7 years, SD = 11.7) and 20 matched healthy controls (HC; mean = 37.6 years, SD = 8.5). Main outcome measures were regional cortical thickness and surface area. We also tested for case-control differences in subcortical structures and the effects of demographic and clinical variables, such as CSBD symptom severity, on neuroimaging outcomes. Moreover, we explored case-control differences in regions outside our hypothesis including white matter.

Results: CSBD patients had significantly lower cortical surface area in right posterior cingulate cortex than HC. We found negative correlations between right posterior cingulate area and CSBD symptoms scores. There were no group differences in subcortical volume.

Conclusions: Our findings suggest that CSBD is associated with structural brain differences, which contributes to a better understanding of CSBD and encourages further clarifications of the neurobiological mechanisms underlying the disorder.

Keywords: brain structure; compulsive sexual behavior; hypersexual disorder; neuroimaging; reward; surface area.

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Conflict of interest statement

CA is employed by Quantify Research (consultancy work unrelated to the present work). The authors report no financial or other relationship relevant to the subject of this article.

Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.
Case-control differences in cortical thickness and surface area. Results (p-values) and effect sizes (Cohen's d) are indicated (color bars). Numerical results can be found in Tables 2–3 for transparency, significance is thresholded at p = 0.05. The brain area in which significant case-control differences were observed after multiple comparison correction (right posterior cingulate) is indicated with * (shown isolated in Figure S1)
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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