Pedophilia Clinical Trial
Official title:
From Attention to Behavior: Increasing Behavioral Inhibition Through Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation in Pedophilia
This project will investigate if transcranial direct current stimulation can be used as treatment for Pedophilia. Treatment efficacy will be evaluated with behavioral tasks and the recording of eye-movement.
Pedophilia is an important motivation for sexual offenses involving children, including child
pornography and sexual contacts with children (henceforth, pedosexual behavior). Indeed,
approximately half of individuals convicted for sexual offenses against children have a
Pedophilic disorder and offenders with a Pedophilic disorder are much more likely to sexually
reoffend.
A promising line of research has examined the neurocognitive basis of pedophilia. Pedophilic
individuals display altered activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) when
attending to child-related stimuli. This brain area is involved in the cognitive control of
sexual arousal. Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) has been examined as a
non-invasive method to increase activity in the dlPCF, ultimately increasing inhibitory
control over impulses. Accumulating evidence also shows that individuals have an attentional
bias towards sexually preferred stimuli. These attentional processes can be investigated by
recording eye movements. Early automatic eye movements are particularly relevant in
discriminating individuals with pedophilia from those without pedophilia.
The proposed study will examine the effects of tDCS over the dlPFC of pedophilic individuals
and healthy controls, while they complete a task requiring controlled attention to virtual
(computer-generated) images of children and adults. In two separate sessions, participants
will be randomly assigned to an active and a placebo (sham) tDCS condition. Eye movements
will be recorded during the task.
The investigators expect to observe a conflict between automatic and controlled attention
when participants are presented with their sexually preferred stimuli. Specifically, the
investigators expect pedophiles to show an attentional bias towards virtual child stimuli.
The investigators predict that the attentional conflict will be reduced when tDCS is applied,
compared to the sham condition. If the attentional bias is a key cognitive feature of sexual
interest, the investigators expect to measure changes in reported or indirectly assessed
sexual preferences.
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