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Frequent and Recent Non-fatal Strangulation/Choking During Sex and Its Association With fMRI Activation During Working Memory Tasks

Being strangled, or “choked,” by a sexual partner has emerged as a prevalent, often wanted and consensual sexual behavior among adolescent and young adult women, yet the neurological consequences of repeated exposure to this behavior are unknown. The objective of the study was to examine the associa...

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Autores principales: Huibregtse, Megan E., Alexander, Isabella L., Klemsz, Lillian M., Fu, Tsung-chieh, Fortenberry, J. Dennis, Herbenick, Debby, Kawata, Keisuke
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9201570/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35722189
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2022.881678
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author Huibregtse, Megan E.
Alexander, Isabella L.
Klemsz, Lillian M.
Fu, Tsung-chieh
Fortenberry, J. Dennis
Herbenick, Debby
Kawata, Keisuke
author_facet Huibregtse, Megan E.
Alexander, Isabella L.
Klemsz, Lillian M.
Fu, Tsung-chieh
Fortenberry, J. Dennis
Herbenick, Debby
Kawata, Keisuke
author_sort Huibregtse, Megan E.
collection PubMed
description Being strangled, or “choked,” by a sexual partner has emerged as a prevalent, often wanted and consensual sexual behavior among adolescent and young adult women, yet the neurological consequences of repeated exposure to this behavior are unknown. The objective of the study was to examine the association between a history of repeated, recent choking/strangling episodes during sex and fMRI activation during working memory tasks in young adult women. This case-control study involved young adult women (18–30 years old) at a large, public university, and consisted of two study groups: a choking group consisting of participants who were recently and frequently choked/strangled during sex by a partner (≥4 times in the past 30 days) and a choking-naïve (control) group who had never been choked/strangled during sex. Participants completed two variations of the N-back (0-back, 1-back, and 2-back) working memory task during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI): verbal and visual N-back tasks. Data from 20 participants per group were available for analysis. Between-group differences for accuracy and reaction time were not significant for either variation of the N-back task. Significant differences in fMRI activation patterns were detected between the choking and the choking-naïve groups for the three contrasts of interest (1-back > 0-back, 2-back > 0-back, and 2-back > 1-back). The choking group exhibited increased activation in multiple clusters relative to the choking-naïve group for the contrasts between the 1-back and 2-back conditions compared to the 0-back conditions (e.g., superior frontal gyrus, corpus callosum). However, the choking-naïve group exhibited increased activation relative to the choking group in several clusters for the 2-back > 1 back contrast (e.g., splenium, middle frontal gyrus). These data indicate that recent, frequent exposure to partnered sexual strangulation is associated with different neural activation patterns during verbal and visual working memory tasks compared to controls, suggesting that being choked/strangled during sex may modify the allocation of neural resources at increasing levels of cognitive load. Further investigation into the neurologic effects of this sexual behavior is warranted, given the prevalence of sexual choking among adolescent and young adult women.
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spelling pubmed-92015702022-06-17 Frequent and Recent Non-fatal Strangulation/Choking During Sex and Its Association With fMRI Activation During Working Memory Tasks Huibregtse, Megan E. Alexander, Isabella L. Klemsz, Lillian M. Fu, Tsung-chieh Fortenberry, J. Dennis Herbenick, Debby Kawata, Keisuke Front Behav Neurosci Behavioral Neuroscience Being strangled, or “choked,” by a sexual partner has emerged as a prevalent, often wanted and consensual sexual behavior among adolescent and young adult women, yet the neurological consequences of repeated exposure to this behavior are unknown. The objective of the study was to examine the association between a history of repeated, recent choking/strangling episodes during sex and fMRI activation during working memory tasks in young adult women. This case-control study involved young adult women (18–30 years old) at a large, public university, and consisted of two study groups: a choking group consisting of participants who were recently and frequently choked/strangled during sex by a partner (≥4 times in the past 30 days) and a choking-naïve (control) group who had never been choked/strangled during sex. Participants completed two variations of the N-back (0-back, 1-back, and 2-back) working memory task during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI): verbal and visual N-back tasks. Data from 20 participants per group were available for analysis. Between-group differences for accuracy and reaction time were not significant for either variation of the N-back task. Significant differences in fMRI activation patterns were detected between the choking and the choking-naïve groups for the three contrasts of interest (1-back > 0-back, 2-back > 0-back, and 2-back > 1-back). The choking group exhibited increased activation in multiple clusters relative to the choking-naïve group for the contrasts between the 1-back and 2-back conditions compared to the 0-back conditions (e.g., superior frontal gyrus, corpus callosum). However, the choking-naïve group exhibited increased activation relative to the choking group in several clusters for the 2-back > 1 back contrast (e.g., splenium, middle frontal gyrus). These data indicate that recent, frequent exposure to partnered sexual strangulation is associated with different neural activation patterns during verbal and visual working memory tasks compared to controls, suggesting that being choked/strangled during sex may modify the allocation of neural resources at increasing levels of cognitive load. Further investigation into the neurologic effects of this sexual behavior is warranted, given the prevalence of sexual choking among adolescent and young adult women. Frontiers Media S.A. 2022-06-02 /pmc/articles/PMC9201570/ /pubmed/35722189 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2022.881678 Text en Copyright © 2022 Huibregtse, Alexander, Klemsz, Fu, Fortenberry, Herbenick and Kawata. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Behavioral Neuroscience
Huibregtse, Megan E.
Alexander, Isabella L.
Klemsz, Lillian M.
Fu, Tsung-chieh
Fortenberry, J. Dennis
Herbenick, Debby
Kawata, Keisuke
Frequent and Recent Non-fatal Strangulation/Choking During Sex and Its Association With fMRI Activation During Working Memory Tasks
title Frequent and Recent Non-fatal Strangulation/Choking During Sex and Its Association With fMRI Activation During Working Memory Tasks
title_full Frequent and Recent Non-fatal Strangulation/Choking During Sex and Its Association With fMRI Activation During Working Memory Tasks
title_fullStr Frequent and Recent Non-fatal Strangulation/Choking During Sex and Its Association With fMRI Activation During Working Memory Tasks
title_full_unstemmed Frequent and Recent Non-fatal Strangulation/Choking During Sex and Its Association With fMRI Activation During Working Memory Tasks
title_short Frequent and Recent Non-fatal Strangulation/Choking During Sex and Its Association With fMRI Activation During Working Memory Tasks
title_sort frequent and recent non-fatal strangulation/choking during sex and its association with fmri activation during working memory tasks
topic Behavioral Neuroscience
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9201570/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35722189
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2022.881678
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