When the brain turns on with sexual desire: fMRI findings, issues, and future directions

Five recommendations are made. First, stimulus types (ie, erotic vs sexually explicit) should be selected by the meaningful theoretical conceptualization of the constructs of interest. Second, participants should be provided with definitions of sexual desire, mental sexual arousal, and perceived genital sexual arousal, so they can choose which terms best describe their experience. Third, event-related designs should be used with caution when investigating sexual desire. Fourth, time series analyses should be used to identify both positive and negative BOLD. Fifth, connectivity analyses should be performed to identify brain networks.