Neurobiological correlates of sexual violence: from child sexual offending towards sexual violence against women

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Tillmann Krüger; Professor Dr. Boris Schiffer, Ph.D.
• Subject Area: Personality Psychology, Clinical and Medical Psychology, Methodology ; General, Cognitive and Mathematical Psychology
• Term: since 2011
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 193636973

The current knowledge on neurobiological underpinnings of sexual violent behavior is very limited, especially with respect to rapists or sex offenders against women. Most of the prior work focused on pedophilia and child sexual offending. As illustrated in our intermediate report, our own work on that issue suggest that child sexual offending behavior, rather than pedophilia, is reflected by a multitude of alterations including heritable, neurobiological and environmental factors. It is therefore a main goal of the proposed research to clarify (1) whether these findings are specific for child sexual offending or may represent a unique neurobiological endophenotype of sexual violence in general and (2) whether or in how far these alterations may relate to most sex offence-predictive stable-dynamic risk factors.Similar to our previous approach on pedophilia and child sexual offending, we will examine three groups of men, which allow for a differentiation of offender status and coercive sexual urges and fantasies: (1) men who committed sexual offences against women, (2) healthy non-offending men, and (3) men suffering from coercive sexual fantasies who did not committed sex offences, yet.As biological measures, we propose assessing endocrine (androgens, sex hormone binding globuline (SHBG), cortisol and prolactin) and epigenetic parameters (androgen, dopamine and serotonin neurotransmitter systems). By using the same multimodal brain imaging techniques (structural imaging on gray and white matter structures, resting state functional connectivity), we further plan to assess and directly compare basic structural and functional brain alterations in sex offenders against women with those found in child sex offenders. A further important aim of this project is the association of empirically confirmed stable-dynamic risk factors with neurobiological measures/alterations. Moreover, by applying task-specific functional MRI, we further aim to explore the neural dysfunctions related to one of the most important risk factors more in depth, impulse-control or response inhibition (RI), respectively. RI will be assessed using the same classic GoNogo response inhibition paradigm as used during the first funding period in child sex offenders. We expect that offender status is associated with specific neuronal response pattern as well as reduced ability to control prepotent impulses resulting in a larger number of commission errors.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants