By Stephanie Pappas
LiveScience

How a man's gaze roams over a woman's body can tell you how into sex he is — a new finding that doesn't play out when the genders are swapped.

Men's gaze reflects their underlying sexual motivation, the researchers found. A woman's gaze, on the other hand, does not seem to match her sexual thoughts as clearly.

The findings aren't just about the differences between Mars and Venus; researchers hope they can be used to track the sexual motivations of sex offenders, providing a way to measure how well treatments are working.

"Eye movement is spontaneous and very difficult to inhibit so we thought perhaps we can use an eye tracker as a reliable marker to track sexual interest," study researcher Kun Guo, a psychologist at the University of Lincoln in the United Kingdom, told LiveScience.

The eyes have it
Previous work has found that men, especially, give away their sexual thoughts with their eyes. The dilation of the pupil in response to sexual images, for example, can reveal sexual orientation reliably in men and in gay women, though straight women don't show such clear patterns. Studies have also found that heterosexual men gaze longer at pictures of women than of men, while heterosexual women look at male and female images about equally. [ 50 Sultry Facts About Sex ]

Guo and his colleagues had previously discovered when young men look at images of women close to them in age, their eyes are drawn to the chest and waist-hip region. (This may not shock any woman who's been ogled in a bar lately.) These two regions are likely important signals for men, with breasts hinting at the sexual maturity of the woman and waist/hip ratio suggesting her ability to carry a child, Guo said. Men don't show the same ogling patterns when looking at older women or children, suggesting this sizing-up may be a signal of sexual interest.

To test the idea, the researchers showed 30 men, ages 18 to 25, and an equivalent group of women, all heterosexual, pictures of clothed children, early-20s adults and adults in their late 30s or early 40s. They asked the participants to simply look at the pictures as they'd normally scan an image while a gaze-tracking device recorded where their eyes moved.

Next, the participants filled out questionnaires about their sexual personalities, covering topics from how sexually inhibited they were to how sexually compulsive, or likely to take sexual risks, they were.

Sexual gaze
By comparing the questionnaire answers with the gaze-tracking data, the researchers found that men who reported more sexual compulsivity or risk-taking gazed longer than other men at the breasts and hip-waist regions of 20-year-old women — but not at those regions in girls or women older than themselves. In other words, their gaze seems to give away their higher-than-average sexual interest. And the longer gazes are confined to women they find sexually interesting (based on age).

"We argue it's a high-level mental process which guides this unique gaze pattern," Guo said.

Women's gaze patterns were not nearly so neat. The researchers did find that highly sexually compulsive women looked more at the bodies of the 20-year-old women than did other women, but they also looked more at the bodies of children and 40-year-old women. It could be that the more sexually compulsive a woman is, the more she compares her body with other women's, the researchers wrote online Nov. 13 in the Journal of Sex Research. Either way, the women's gaze did not appear to reveal their sexual interests; no gaze patterns were found when shown images of men.

Guo and his colleagues are now analyzing the data from a third experiment comparing the gaze patterns of sex offenders with non-offenders. So far, he said, the results look promising.

"We argue probably we can use this eye tracker potentially as some kind of reliable methodologically to asses how effective the treatment is and how likely people will be to reoffend," Guo said.

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They call sex “dirty.”

They are right.

Messing around is messy business, involving certain human juices that – during any fully clothed hour of the day – usually elicit at least a wince: saliva, sweat, semen, plus body odors. An intimate river of secretions. (Let’s see someone pen a love song using that title. We’re guessing Madonna is up for the challenge.)

They didn't dub it “bumpin' uglies” for nothing. But some of the physiological funk that accompanies sex begs a scientific question: How have eons of generations procreated, keeping the species alive, when reproduction requires us to either A) ignore certain bodily fluids or B) pretty much embrace them?

A new study conducted in the Netherlands offers a possible answer: Sexual arousal seems to dampen our natural disgust response. The findings were published Wednesday in the open access journal PLOS ONE. Lab tests blended porn and plastic bugs – but more on that lovely combo in a second. The researchers discovered that if you’re in the mood, love conquers all, even the stanky stuff, neurologically speaking.

“This (answers) the intriguing question of how people succeed in having pleasurable sex at all,” wrote the authors, led by Charmaine Borg of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. “Sex and disgust are basic, evolutionary relevant functions that are often construed as paradoxical … and possibly obstructive.”

Even Sigmund Freud, who had a little something to say on sex, recognized this fact, writing: “A man, who will kiss a pretty girl’s mouth passionately, may perhaps be disgusted by the idea of using her toothbrush.” True that.

Ironically – at least to us – the Dutch team chose to test heterosexual females with an average age of 23 versus the horniest people on the planet: college dudes. The subjects, recruited from the University of Groningen, were assigned to one of three categories: “sexual arousal,”  “non-sexual, positive arousal,” and a neutral control group.

To stir the women into the desired states for the experiments, the “sexual arousal” subset was shown a 35-minute, “female friendly” erotic film – “de Gast” – which in Dutch means, “The Guest.” (Feel free to imagine the plotline but we’re assuming “the guest” was a really good listener and an excellent cuddler who swore that those jeans in no way made her butt look huge.) Meanwhile, the “positive arousal group” got to watch an adrenaline-rush movie on rafting, skydiving and mountain climbing. And the control group’s featured footage: a train trip offering natural scenery. (Zzzzzz.)

Researchers next asked all the women to complete 16 gross tasks, including sipping juice from a cup containing an insect (the bug was plastic) and wiping their hands with a "used" tissue (the snot was just colored ink).

The erotically revved women agreed to perform the highest percentage of repulsive jobs, the study reported. And they did those disagreeable duties “with less disgust than subjects who were not sexually aroused,” the authors wrote, “suggesting that the state of arousal has some effect on women's disgust response.”

Following their volunteer work, the lascivious ladies were supplied with “refreshments” then handed a parting gift: 10 Euros. In Amsterdam, apparently that's the traditional culmination of “date night.” 

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Questions about sexual desire and love have plagued humans for eons. While poets, musicians, and artists believe love lives in the heart, scientists know it exists in the brain. And sex? Apparently, that urge resides in the "little brain" or the bed or maybe a barn. It gets a little confusing what with those tired old adages about cows and free milk (or pigs and free sausage).

34873.000000 / Getty Images stock

He wants you, but does he love you? A new study finds love and sexual desire are controlled by the same part of the brain.

Now a new study has found that the same regions of the brain that control love also control sex -- indicating that sexual desire can actually morph into love. That's right. If a woman has sex with a man, he might not only buy the cow but love the cow, as well.

“Love and sex are clearly overlapping and they are different,” says Jim Pfaus, a professor of psychology at Concordia University in Montreal who's been studying love and libidos for more than a decade. “You can have desire for sex without love.”

But sex can also be the start of a beautiful relationship.

How does all of this work?

The brain's insular cortex (or insula) and the striatum play a role in both sexual desire and love. The insula is nestled deep within the cerebral cortex and influences emotions. While the striatum resides in the forebrain and receives messages from the cortex.

In order to map out the location of sexual desire and love, researchers reviewed 20 studies that used fMRI technology. First, they looked at the regions of the brain that lit up when sparked by love. They then compared the findings of all the papers to see what regions were activated when someone felt aroused or amorous.  

What they discovered was a bit surprising -- love and sexual desire both activate the striatum, showing a continuum from sexual desire to love. Each feeling impacts a different area of the striatum.

Sexual desire activates the ventral striatum, the brain’s reward system. When someone enjoys a great dessert or an orgasm, it’s the ventral striatum that flickers with life. Love sparks activity in the dorsal striatum, which is associated with drug addiction.

“You don’t make a connection that love is a drug; it acts just like drug addiction," says Pfaus. "Anyone who has had someone break up with them feels like a drug addict in withdrawal. You end up getting cravings.”

But it doesn't stop there. The researchers also saw an overlap between sexual desire and love in the insula.

“[The insula] translates emotional feelings into meaning,” explains Pfaus. “You take the internal state and give it external meaning.”

The areas of overlap indicate that sexual desire transitions into love in many cases, and the feelings aren’t separate.

“Even love at first sight, can it happen? Of course it can happen," says Pfaus. "And when it does happen, do you want to play Scrabble with each other? When it happens, you normally want to consummate it.”

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"What would you trade for Internet access?" That's the question the Boston Consulting Group posed to survey participants across the globe. The results from the USA might surprise you:

• 21 percent would stop having sex. It's like saying: "Sorry honey, I would rather read Kim Kardashian's Twitter feed."
• 84 percent would ditch their GPS. Let the "Why don't we just ask for directions?" fights commence.
• 83 percent would say good-bye to fast food. We finally found what would break America's drive-thru obsession.
• 77 percent would cut out chocolate. Which means 23 percent of people are crazy enough about cocoa beans to keep their candy instead of the world wide web.
• 73 percent would skip happy hour for good. Let's toast to the web: Nearly three-quarters of Americans would abstain from alcoholic beverages in order to go on the Internet.
• 43 percent would put an end to exercising. Any excuse to skip the gym, right?
• 10 percent would throw away their car keys. The skyrocketing price of gas doesn't hurt either.

5 Ways to Heat Up Your Sex Life

And the kicker:

7 percent would stop showering. That's right, people are willing to give up basic hygiene for Words With Friends, which we can't help but think might actually limit real life friends.

Bringing The Sexy Back

And it seems that our counterparts across the pond are even more digitally dependent than Americans: A whopping 17 percent of Brits would forego bathing for an entire year in order to get web access. These findings are astounding and a bit disturbing. With a growing number of studies showing how technology can do a number on our health, from messing up sleep patterns to hurting self-esteem, we can't help but wonder…Is it time for a digital detox?

More Links:
40 Things You Should Know About Sex By Age 40
5 Ways Your Job Is Making You Fat
Is Facebook Ruining Your Self-Esteem?
The 8 Best Cities for Singles Over 40

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NBC

There is a nostalgia for time younger people never actually experienced, like for the 60s era bouncing bunnies of the NBC series "The Playboy Club." Is it that we want to be one or be with one?

Does sex have to be taboo-breaking to be hot? And now that just about every taboo has been broken, have people under 40 lost interest?

In essay by Erica Jong in the Sunday New York Times, "Is Sex Passé?", the “Fear of Flying” author frets, "…everywhere there are signs that sex has lost its frisson of freedom. Is sex less piquant when it is not forbidden? Sex itself may not be dead, but it seems sexual passion is on life support."

The essay’s churned up plenty of backlash to her sex backlash theory, with Jezebel writer Erin Gloria Ryan accusing Jong of focusing on middle-aged 30somethings, not actual young people, and ignoring “an entirely new generation's discovery of and fascination with sex.” And Salon's Tracy Clark-Flory calls Jong's piece "just the latest in a long history of arguments about how sex is being corrupted or destroyed."

But I stated similar worries to Jong in my last book, "America Unzipped," because couples and singles -- of all generations -- spoke to me of finding themselves on a kind of sexual treadmill, chasing the next thrill because the last one had become boring. 

Now that the great digital cloud delivers depictions of every possible erotic combination, what’s the young taboo-breaker to do other than to retreat into a kind of defiant rejection of passionate sexual exploration?

But while there is some truth to Jong’s fretting, there is no “backlash against sex” as Jong wrote (at least not outside of the elite confines inhabited by Jong and New York and West Coast literati). Young women are not turning their backs on sex, but Jong is right when she writes that they are longing for some of the shuddering thrill that used to go with it.

While porn revenues are way down, free digital erotica (often depicting users themselves) has become an utterly mainstream pastime. Sex toy sales continue to climb and many of those buyers are under 40. (Msnbc.com recently ran a how-to for getting your dildos through TSA checkpoints.) There is no indication younger women are coupling less often than they ever did. Hookup culture is real. 

But it is also true that there is nostalgia for an era people under 40 never actually experienced and of which they may have an unrealistic view. Spend any time at all on Tumblr and -- in addition to hundreds of porn blogs -- you will find Audrey Hepburn worship and Marlena Dietrich worship. Eighteen-year-old girls devote time to archiving glamorous photos of models from the early 1960s and Irving Penn photographs of Lisa Fonssagrives. Retro stripper Dita von Tease is a style icon a decade after she first broke into the mainstream. Young women are not rejecting sex, they are craving the glamour that used to surround sex.

Jong’s ziplessness (sexual encounters free of remorse or guilt) still exists, but younger people seem torn. They like the freedom. But they want the best parts of bygone eras, too. They want seduction, uncertainty, pursuit, not necessarily, as Jong argues, monogamy and missionary, pre-JFK-era sex. Maybe not like the new NBC series "The Playboy Club," but white gloves and pearls and flirtation over drinks at the St. Regis bar just seems far more engaging than shots of Red Bull and vodka and a quickie in the parking lot.

There is one other thing to consider: A certain amount of disillusionment with sex isn’t a trend, it’s biology. Our brains are designed to seek novelty. The amount of novelty each of us seeks depends on our own wiring and neurochemicals that activate that wiring. When we don’t get enough novelty, we get bored. Jong and her generation helped make it possible for all of us to get whatever form of sexual novelty we desired, any time we wanted it.

I once worked in a Baskin-Robbins ice cream store. I could eat as much ice cream as I wanted. After the second day, I was pretty bored with ice cream.                      

Msnbc.com contributor Brian Alexander is currently writing a book with Emory University neuroscientist Larry Young about the brain, love, and sex.

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In the absence of prominent “jazz hands,” or obvious rainbow flag toting, many of us have lousy "gaydar." That’s likely because most people don’t really spend much time caring about who’s gay and who’s straight. (And the fact that gay people don't actually walk around with jazz hands.) 

Fertile women, on the other hand, or even women who are simply thinking about sex, do care, though they may not know it. In fact, ovulating women may have more accurate gaydar than the rest of us, according to a study in the journal Psychological Science.

When Nicholas Rule of the University of Toronto and colleagues showed a group of heterosexual college women 80 photos of men, 40 of whom were straight and 40 of whom were gay, women who were nearing the most fertile time of their monthly periods were much better at guessing which men were gay. There was no motion or sound. The photos did not differ in expression, attractiveness or facial adornments like the 'stache on the Village People biker.

As Rule explains, past experiments have shown straight men and women all have a bias toward judging men in photos as straight. “This makes sense since straight men outnumber gay men as much as 9:1,” he said. But when women are fertile, they can overcome this bias.

Why? Is it because a man’s sexual orientation becomes more relevant at times when women can get pregnant so they don’t pick a man who will be, reproductively speaking, unavailable? Or is there something about fertility that makes women more attentive to facial cues they miss at other times of the month?

To answer that question, Rule showed straight women 100 photos of lesbians and 100 photos of straight women. While accuracy was greater than random chance, it didn’t matter if the women were fertile or not.

Next, Rule had women read a story of a romantic encounter to induce “mating-related” thoughts (science speak for sex). The women who read the story were much more accurate at guessing a man’s sexual orientation regardless of whether she was fertile or not.

“What we do know is that a mix of women at any given point in their cycles did better when primed to think about mating than when not primed to think about mating,” Rule said.

So it seems male sexual orientation is a more relevant matter for women when they are fertile, and because it’s more relevant they pay attention. I asked Rule if heterosexual women are born with this ability or they learn it. He replied that he thinks he has an answer, but he has just finished a study addressing the issue and since it has not yet been published, he doesn’t want to give it away.

But whether learned or inborn, when female thoughts -- even unconscious thoughts -- turn to mating, women are able to turn down distractions and turn up the cues that say, “Hey there, baby daddy!”

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Getty Images stock

Women may be saying more with their mouths than you realize.

Here's a fun fact to share at parties this weekend: The shape of a woman's lips may predict the likelihood of her having an orgasm. (Seriously.)

Stuart Brody, a psychology professor at the University of the West of Scotland, is famous among researchers of sexual behavior for some of his studies, like ones linking a woman’s finger sensitivity to partnered sex behavior, and most especially a 2008 doozy that linked a woman’s gait -- “fluid, graceful,” “free of blocked or distorted pelvic rotation” -- with a greater chance of having so-called vaginal orgasms. In other words, he said, you can tell a lot about a woman by the way she walks. 

Now, in a paper published last week by the Journal of Sexual Medicine, and called “Vaginal Orgasm Is More Prevalent Among Women with a Prominent Tubercle of the Upper Lip,” Brody has come out with another marker for female orgasm; the little spot just at the midline of the upper lip. Called the tubercle, it poofs out a little more in some people than in others. (Brody stresses he’s not referring to puffy Angelina Jolie lips, just to that one tiny spot.)

According to the results of an online survey featuring 258 mainly Scottish women with a mean age of 27 years, having a prominent tubercle means a woman has a greater chance of ever having had a vaginal orgasm.

If you think that sounds kooky, you may be onto something. There are a couple of controversies to consider. First, not all scientists believe that there is any real difference between a “clitoral” orgasm and a “vaginal” orgasm (mainly because the little man in the boat is really just the tip of the iceberg, so to speak, that extends into the vaginal wall). In Brody’s research, tubercle size did not predict orgasm by clitoral stimulation.

Second, there could be confounding factors. When I asked if it was possible the women with the prominent tubercles may have been more attractive and so had more opportunities for sex and attracted better lovers, Brody replied that “I am not aware of research linking women’s attractiveness to their likelihood of vaginal orgasm. That could be a future study.”  There is, however, “research that some male attributes are associated with likelihood of vaginal orgasm.”

Third, the women themselves, rather than an independent party, judged their own tubercle characteristics based on eyeballing their own lips.

Still, Brody may really be on to something, not only with this study, but with his gait research and what seems to be an ongoing hunt for markers that signify sexual response.

As he speculates in the paper, “anatomic study has indicated that by week 17, the human fetus may have already developed the tubercle of the lip.” While he could find no research relating the tubercle to sexual response, “we did locate evidence of an embryonic neural process that organizes midline cranial features, which could plausibly relate morphology to behavior in other contexts.”

In other words, it is probably not the lip feature itself that makes the difference (if any difference really exists), it may be that the same developmental forces that shape a fetus’ tubercle, also affects neural circuits. “It is possible,” Brody writes, “that a flatter or absent tubercle might have something in common with the at times subtle lip abnormalities associated with subtle neuropsychologic abnormalities” and these subtle differences may, in turn, affect vaginal orgasm.

It is true that prenatal events dramatically shape our future sexual lives. Perhaps the shape of our lips are one telltale sign.

Related:

• Your walk may reveal more than you think
  

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Susan Walsh / AP

Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-N.Y., waits for an elevator near his office on Capitol Hill in Washington on Thursday.

The flashes -- both the news and nether region variety -- seem to be popping up everywhere lately: Brett Favre allegedly aired it out and Kanye West snapped south of the border.

After a lewd photo was sent from Rep. Anthony Weiner's Twitter account, the aptly dubbed “Weinergate” saga has exposed a truly touchy question for the Tech Age: Why are some dudes compelled to take cell phone pics of their private parts then share those images -- via texts or tweets -- with the ladies?

It’s time to apply some psychological expertise -- let’s call it “junk” science -- to this sexting obsession among some fellas.

“The simplest theory for the behavior,” said Marta Meana, president of the Society for Sex Therapy and Research, “is that these men think the photos will serve to arouse the woman – because they, themselves, would find it arousing if that woman sent such a photo to them.”

Here’s the rub: that theory applies only to men who send down-and-dirty close-ups to women they know. If a sexter sends an unsolicited, digital portrait of his genitals to a woman he doesn’t know, “it is likely that the act … is arousing to the sender -- sub-clinical or clinical exhibitionism,” said Meana, also a psychology professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. “The primary intent … is to arouse themselves.”

That scenario seems fit the three celebrities mentioned above -- if they, in fact, did it. (Update: OK, now we know that Weiner did, in fact, do it.)

Favre, the retired quarterback, was fined $50,000 by the NFL late last year for “failing to cooperate” with a league probe into whether he sent x-rated snaps to former NY Jets employee Jenn Sterger. He has not owned up to what may have been the final sack shot of his career. Sterger said she never met Favre.

West, before fame, gifted some of his female MySpace friends with an unsolicited crotch shot which hit the Internet last year. West subsequently admitted to a radio station that the appendage image was his groin.

And on May 27, a post from New York Congressman Anthony Weiner’s Twitter account linked to an image of a man wearing two things -- gray boxer shorts and an erect penis. That picture was sent to one of Weiner’s Twitter followers -- a 21-year-old college student in Seattle, who Weiner said he didn’t know. The U.S. House member denied posting the photo, but noted he couldn’t say “with certitude” the pic was not of his own privates. Weiner’s spokesman initially said the Congressman’s Twitter account had been hacked.

From ballers to rappers to -- maybe -- lawmakers, Little Willy, Willy won’t stay home.

If nothing else, the latest battle of the bulge put Weiner’s long-time pal Jon Stewart in an awkward place. The tweeted image plus Weiner’s job plus – of course – his ironic name – proved too much for “The Daily Show” not to urge “You’ve got to come cleaner, Weiner” in this hilarious Jon Stewart clip.

Here’s the hard truth, guys: Most women are not turned on by video or digital glimpses of your junk, Meana said.

Empirical literature shows clear differences in what lights the passions of males and females. While many dudes are visual animals focused on sexual anatomy, “women’s subjective arousal appears to be more driven by relationship dynamics, expressions of desire, narrative expositions of that desire,” Meana said.

But some ladies -- especially those already in a physical relationship with the sender -- are into sexting. Still, it’s an erotic fine line.

“Sending such a photo after a sexless first date is probably a misstep -- it skips too many courtship stages,” Meana added.  “Sending such a photo after you have had hot sex could be sexy to some women.”

Related:

• Breitbart site publishes photos of shirtless man it claims is Weiner
• Your name impacts how others judge you
• NY Rep. Weiner: Lewd photo 'was of me, I sent it'

Bill Briggs is a frequent contributor to msnbc.com and author of “The Third Miracle.” 

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