Money is a sexual turn-off: It's official

Groundbreaking research has proved that sex and money stimulate two completely different areas of the brain, blasting the theory that money is a turn-on into outer space. While cash stimulates the frontal lobe of the brain, erotic images activate another part further towards the center.

The research was undertaken by Jean-Claude Dreher, team leader of a research unit at the Lyon Center of Cognitive Neuroscience and was publicised on September 29 in the Journal of Neuroscience, of the American Neuroscience Society. The study was made on a group of eighteen males with an average age of 23 years, who took part in a game which allowed them to win money or view erotic images.

Their reactions were recorded using magnetic resonance over a period of 45 minutes in which 200 stimuli were presented to images such as a safe loaded with money and erotic images, the quantity of money and the intensity of the erotic content varying. The research proved clearly that erotic pleasure and winning money stimulate two distinct areas of the brain.

The erotic images activate an older area in the scale of evolution, whereas the money stimulated an area which has developed more recently, both in the orbit frontal cortex, the former registering in the interior part and the latter, more to the front. The more complex the rewards, the more the frontal part was stimulated

The disassociation between stimuli through erotica and through winning money is made for the first time, and the research team believes this may help to understand addiction to gambling, for instance and may lead scientists to ascertain whether such addictions are due to a dysfunction of certain parts of the brain.

Timofei Belov

Pravda.Ru