The grail isn't holy!

What causes pedophilia?

"Nobody knows" was the usual answer. This is no longer true as research has made progress. In the following, I give an interpretation that answers most of the question. But, it involves a twist of logic. 

What causes darkness?

If someone expects the holy grail to be shiny, an ordinary object will escape the attention. Similarly, if someone looks for a distinct cause, the reason for a certain situation might not be obvious. The answer I give in this blog is not an answer to the original question, but an explanation of the phenomenon. 

Pedophiles have a preference for children. This also means that they don't prefer women. This seems to be obvious, but it is seldom discussed in scientific literature. However, this is the part of the question that is mostly answered by now.

Q: What causes darkness?
A: The absence of light.

Cross wiring

James M. Cantor PhD sometimes explains pedophilia as a cross wiring within the brain. Instead of engaging the nurture instinct, the view of children causes sexual arousal: "pedophiles got their wires crossed". A similar explanation claims that sexual arousal is caused by images of children instead of the appropriate partner. The cross wiring metaphor has inherent limitations. One imagines a wire being removed and thereafter a new connection being made. However, no pedophile was truly a heterosexual to begin with. Hence, no wire was removed, it merely is absent.

Cross wiring also suggests that the new connection is established after the old connection was removed. The phrase "instead of" points in the same direction. Understanding that "cross wiring" is a metaphor, one could ponder if the order of events could be reversed, a new connection is made before the old one is removed. Moreover, is this "new connection" really a new one or existing in all humans?

The results by Cantor and his colleagues make sense with respect to the "first wire". Much of it points towards brain organization. In short, his probands are more likely to be shorter, left-handed, less intelligent, having had head injuries before the age of 13, more cranio-facial anomalies, and less white-matter in the brain. Cantor himself points out that there might be a disturbance in the development responsible for all this and it can more or less be traced back to prenatal origins. All of it sounds rather as something not working as expected than creating a new orientation from scratch. Summa summarum: this makes perfect sense when thinking of that "removed first wire". What could that be?

Intuitive sexuality

This term is made up by me. However, similar terms are used by Steven Pinker in "The Blank Slate" to refer to innate abilities. Most humans have a pretty good idea, what others are thinking. Pinker calls this "intuitive psychology" and it is missing in people with Autism. They simply have no idea what others are thinking.  

With intuitive sexuality I mean normal heterosexuality. Since most persons experience their sexuality as something natural and intuitive, nobody spends much time questioning the nature of it. Sometimes, it is described as a sex drive, while in animals it is called mating instinct. Instincts are patterns of behavior that play out once triggered. Humans have the ability to think rationally and to act according to rational decisions and overriding those urges. However, we also have a thing called gut feeling and jumping to conclusions. Both are remains of instincts. Sometimes, we act in certain consistent patterns and are not able to give a justification. Kim Sterelny's book "The evolved apprentice" gives several examples related to cooperation.

The intuitive sexuality can be understood as a weak instinct. Instinct are hard wired in the brain, which according to Cantor was subjected to some disturbances (in pedophiles). Pinker points out that the brain develops while in use. The basic structure exists at birth, but a lot of changes happen after birth and during growth. One of those changes is the myelination - wrapping neurons in fatty neuroglia cells. In short, wrapped neurons fire faster. Cantor first found out on MRI-T1 images that those fatty cells are not visible in regions related to sex. In the latest paper by him and co-authors, missing myelination was reasoned as one of the possible explanations for the discovered anisotropy.

So, Cantor & Co found evidence, which I relate to the absent "first wire". This means that big part of pedophilia can be explained by the absence of intuitive sexuality.

The second peak

It is a myth that normal heterosexual people are only attracted to age peers of the opposite sex. Violent homophobic people are found to show genital arousal to same sex scenarios. There is homosexual prison sex, and homoerotic behavior in the military. Moreover, child molestations is mainly carried out by non-pedophiles - one study found pedophiles to make up just 16.2% of the tested child sexual offenders. The average person has not a narrow sexual target but reacts to a variety of persons of both sexes and different ages. It can be imagined as a hilly landscapes with peaks here and there.

Normally, the intuitive sexuality should overshadow all other peaks. People are aware of their main attraction. 

If the peak of intuitive sexuality is absent, some other peak is the highest. Which one it is, depends on a number of things. Some animals live in a homosexual partnership, because foraging is easier in pairs. Chimps are known to use youngsters as shields against aggressivity from other males. There are many ways, a certain company can be comforting.

The two-stage model of sexuality

It is difficult to explain a lot of sexual phenomena without assuming this two-stage model. First an attraction target is acquired, then the clues of comforting company are causing sexual arousal. If this second stage fails, one develops the paraphilia known as asexuality. This model also explains, why sexual conversion therapies failed - they tried to fix the second stage without working on the comforting company.

In short, if a person fails to obtain intuitive sexuality, and finds the company of children comforting, a lot of thoughts will focus on them. This might even be a self-enforcing circle - the more one falls out of the peer group, the less one will be driven to the opposite sex. The second peak gets a chance to take over. 

But why are some missing out on intuitive sexuality?

Some try to find an evolutionary reason for the existence of pedophiles. It is even harder to argue why some people should be affected by autism. It makes no sense, considering hebephile, pedophiles or autistic savants as isolated groups. Human evolution reduced the way instincts impacted our behavior, made humans more flexible, and it made intelligence possible. All this is related to the neoteny humans possess. Most attractions are to signs of balanced neoteny. Cute children are treated with many favors - so much that it is not fair to plain children. 

The price of this development is paid by those, who get some of it in abundance. Too much reduction of an instinct renders it weak. It is advantageous when not reacting with panic, when the box we are sitting in is moving. Fear of flying has become rare. Sea sickness as a false alarm to food poisoning is still frequent. Most persons are able to understand the mind of other people. Most people are still seeking the opposite sex for lifetime partnership. But a few don't. 

Conjectures

The ticking-time-bomb meme portrait in media and some scientific journals probably is false. If the absent intuitive sexuality is a precondition for pedophilia, sexual urges should be less strong than in heterosexuals. Most statements about pedophiles are made by normal hetersexuals. It is too tempting to draw from personal experience, when making statements about other. Too much what is said about pedophiles are in fact projections by heterosexuals.

Cross-wiring in the brain of pedophiles

There is this "common consensus" among "experts" that the brain of pedophiles is cross wired. In the last paper by Cantor et al, the authors say that there is no "disconnection", but a "dysconnection". Right. Or are they wrong? The "experts" claim the following. If a "normal" person sees a child, the parental love is activated. But in a pedophile, it is the sexual love instead.

Ok, there are studies using functional MRI's and they report differences. I have also seen a meta-study where they listed all those studies and listed which regions were activated in pedophiles - there was not much consistency to see. This could be a case of p-value hacking, which i discussed earlier.

Back to the "common consensus" of cross-wiring, how much truth is there to this assumption? Is there really an activation of something completely different in parents than in pedophiles? That is what cross-wiring implies, or am i wrong?

What are the chances that evolution created a sexual love system and completely separated parental love? Testosterone, oestrogen, adrenaline, dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, and vasopressin are the usual suspects for love hormones or the cocktail of them. Some say it is a myth that mothers get sexual aroused by breastfeeding their children. But it is oxytocin that controls the milk let down. One treatment option for social interaction orders involves a nasal spray containing oxytocin. Just by reading the article about oxytocin, one understands that there are no two separate love systems, there is only one. So what is parental love, then?

I have read several accounts of boy- and girllovers, who did not feel any sexual attraction to their own children. However, the friends of their children had the usual effects. The reason for that is the Westermarck effect. It renders long known acquaintances sexually inattractive. Is parental love the same as sexual love, but with brakes put on by the Westermarck effect? I think so. From an evolutionary points, it makes sense to reuse an existing system and to add some inhibitors to it than to evolve a brand new system for offspring caring.

Moreover, it makes sense to loose sexual interest in a person after getting to know him/her for a long time. In former times children of age 7 were supposed to fend for themselves, coincidentally the seventh year is also the one with the most breakups in marriages. Love hormones make us befriend a complete stranger. The own kids are around from day one, not exactly being strangers. This is another reason, why parents don't feel a sexual attraction, they are already close to their children. If they have not been close to their children, genetic sexual attraction happens, just think of oedipus.

So, what exactly is this cross-wiring talk about if there is nothing to cross?

Making sense of James Cantor's research

James Cantor's articles are heavily discussed in the pedophile community. He is a researcher at CAMH and carries out research using forensic samples, meaning men who are caught in the legal system. Among his findings are that on average: their IQ is lower, they are missing white matter, they are shorter, have craniofacial anomalies and shorter legs. Of course the tall, smart, beautiful pedos cry out.  His articles are scrutinized and critiques have been written pointing out holes. Ok, i might be too stupid to date women, but how exactly do short legs cause pedophilia? Craniofacial anomalies or simply ugliness might ruin my chances of getting laid, but i would still chase women and not children. What could be behind all those research findings?

Preamble

Many researchers look to chimpanzees and bonobos, our closest cousins in the animal kingdom, for some clues. Other sex researchers like Jim Pfaus use rats to study sexual behavior. However, there is one huge difference between most animals and humans. Humans are neotenous, more than cats and dogs. Neoteny means the retention of juvenile features. It does not mean that adults look childish. It means that without neoteny our heads should look much more like grown up chimpanzees and not like those of chimpanzee babies. We should have larger teeth, a smaller brain, and a bigger fang.

There is little to be found on the internet how neoteny manifests itself. The best explanation is a retarded development, meaning that all developmental processes run with a much reduced speed. Different processes run at different speeds. Some processes never finish, like the skull bone fusion which still goes on in the ninth decade. Compared with the mammal model, human processes take 5 to 15 times more time. According to that model, humans should be born after 21 month of gestation. Since the head would be too big by then, humans are born at the latest possible moment, when the baby's head just passes through the birth canal. After birth the baby continues to grow at the same rate for the next year. One of the processes taking longer time is the brain maturation, 90% completed by age 10, but almost finished first in the mid-twenties, give or take a few years.

Human instincts

Psychologist Abraham Maslow argued that humans no longer have instincts because we have the ability to override them in certain situations. The criteria for instincts cited in this wikipedia article create a false dichotomy. Either it's an instinct or should be considered a drive, but the latter is defined much different by Drive theory. The biggest counter argument against the non-existence of instincts is the fact that psychology works. Psychology works because human behavior follows rules. Patients in psychiatric care have difficulties overriding certain "innate behavior" (aka instincts). Probably the reason for the renaming into "innate behavior" might be related to the illusion of a free will. Free will denotes the idea that humans can do and behave in the way they want, ultimately meaning that all actions are deliberate and thought through.

During the human evolution the increasing intelligence made us to a lesser degree the marionettes of instincts. The notion of free will represents the ultimate end of this development.  This development will affect all instincts, some more other less. Some instincts are necessary for the survival of the species, like the sexual mating instinct. Hence, the human evolution weakened those instincts to the point where they are just strong enough for the genes to survive. Evolution works by variation: some get stronger, while others get weaker instincts. Those men, who have sex with strange women when completely drunk, got a higher amount of sexual mating instincts. Those, who develop a paraphilia instead of a healthy heterosexuality, probably got less than necessary. As a consequence, the appearance of not sufficiently strong enough instincts is part of evolution. Basically, this means that those instincts get overridden before they manifest themselves.

The link between instincts and neoteny lies in the way our brain develops. Most animals are born with most instincts functioning. Their brains are fully myelinated at birth, while humans are born with mostly unmyelinated brains. During the first years the myelination takes place. That means neuroglia cells are formed and their fatty parts show up as white spots on T1-sMRI. Neuroglia cells are shielding the axons of neurons, hence they are part of the white matter or the so called connecting tissue. Neoteny delays the manifestation of instincts. However, it seems that there are critical periods during the development. If a skill or behavior is not learned during such a time window, it is hard if not impossible to catch up.

The research findings

One of the better known results regarding pedophiles is the missing white matter. Sometimes it is also referred to as cross-wiring, since the researchers believe that instead of parental instincts, sexual instincts are activated. This is an overly simplistic view and there is no explanation why the cable instead of going to A goes to B instead. If it were a random cross-wiring, we should see an activation of the whole spectrum of instincts.

The craniofacial findings point to prenatal events, also called prenatal insults. Skin cells and neurons differentiate in the same way during embryogenesis before the blastula folds inwards and the spinal cord and brain are formed. If the development of skin cells gets disturbed during that period, it is likely that it affected neural cells as well. The observed correlation has been interpreted as an indicator for prenatal causes of pedophilia. Another anomaly is the testosterone level during certain critical prenatal periods. Getting the wrong amount of it and something goes wrong. It has been experimentally shown in rats (Jim Pfaus & Co) and there has been a longitudinal study in Denmark confirming it.

I'm wondering, whether the testosterone level in humans is similar to other mammals. The slowed down development in humans is caused by something or something necessary for the development is absent. Gaffney and Berlin reported a dysfunction of the hypothalamic–pituitary–gonadal axis in pedophiles, which again is important for testosterone levels. Testosterone breaks down into estradiol, which seem to have far reaching influence.

The latest papers propose a disturbance in the development to be the cause for some paraphilias. If we add the reasonable assumption that exclusive pedophiles are not interested in women, then we can conclude that the heterosexual instinct did not manifest itself. The development of the human sexual mating instinct, aka heterosexual orientation, got derailed. As with train derailments there might be multiple ways of that happening. This is the reason why some meta-studies report many different and sometimes conflicting results. Trains can go with a high velocity into a tight turn, rails can be deformed, the rail bed can have broken away, the wheels might lose contact, the bogie can oscillate - all of them possible causes for a train derailment.

Non-exclusive pedophile men are attracted to women, hence there is a working instinct, but the erotic attraction includes more than women. Normally, only the sight or scent of women should cause arousal. This arousal seems to be learned - clues of the preferred partner get erotized. John Money calls this disturbance a vandalization of the lovemap, which are supposedly formed around the age of 6. This would implicate events in early childhood as possible causes. Again weak instincts might have enable those developments, since they didn't offer much resistance to aberration.

Weak human instincts are not mainstream psychology. Common for paraphilia is the absence of a healthy heterosexual orientation. Hence, it seems kinda obvious to assume that something went wrong with the heterosexual mating instinct. This assumption is simple, it is supported by human evolution, the existence of human neoteny and the limited degree of free will among humans. So instincts failed to work as they should. I call it the faulty neoteny hypothesis.

Disclaimer

This is amateur research, making sense of research papers. As such it is not backed by a financed scientific study, but based on logic and scientific literature. As an amateur i'm free to pursue ideas that are not mainstream.

We are using just 10% of the brain, aren't we?

Well, I broke a bone the other day and wondered, wouldn't it have been nice to have an extra pair of arms. It surely would help opening a bottle - the one arm is up to no use. Luckily I have like 90% spare brain capacity, switched that on and started thinking.

Evolution gave us only two arms, why? When did that happened? Of course, some million years ago. But then, our ancestors didn't walked upright, so we had 4 feets more or less. It would have been nice if we had insects as ancestors, but reptiles are just fine. Reptiles like alligators have this fine art of moving. One paws goes down on each side, the other one goes up by a twist of the torso. Another twist of the body and the whole animal has moved forward. One can image how evolution had pity with a wriggling worm, adding some more tissue here and there.

Ok, evolution didn't foresee my accident and didn't anticipate my dilemma with my broken bone. Maybe I'm not that important after all. It would have been nice having a kevlar skin and a skeleton out of adamantium. Wouldn't that be nice, having an accident, getting up, locking down on the smashed concrete and go on with life? No, humans have to break bones. What they told me on the emergency room seems to be true - I'm not the only one. Apparently, humans break bones all the time. Whoever designed the human body should be fired, at least it is not an intelligent design.

Luckily I have 90% spare brain capacity, so I can think about that too. What kind of calculation did evolution resort to when it calculated the bone thickness. As it turned out, it didn't used Excel - this time no blame on Microsoft. But it makes no sense, if we have intelligence in abundance, then we should have enough bone tissue too.

Everything in nature is there for a reason, right? But evolution does not reason, it is not an entity that has a PhD in structural design. Evolution does not exist! Surprised? It is nothing more than a set of laws that dictate what survives and what not. The magic ingredients are variations. Some guy gets bigger bones. I would loved to have been that guy with twice the bone thickness. Although it would have required much more energy to escape those bullies during childhood. But I guess I'm on the thin bone side. That is how evolution selected the right bone size for humans, simply by trial and error.

added 2015-09-11: Actually bones grow according to their usual stress exposed pressure. If the experienced pressure exceeds a certain amount, the bone growth. This is how weightlifters end up with a body that really can list 100 kg, while my bones would break.

As it turns out, evolution uses this simple method for everything. Everything? Haven't I just used spare brain capacity? Isn't the brain an exception? As a matter of fact, there is a very good reason for not being an exception. The human brain uses twenty percent of the oxygen. This is so much that we need to cook our meals in order to get enough nutrition. Everybody with a smaller brain would have to eat much less. Did I really used spare brain capacity? No, we humans have brains about the right size for the job.

What does right size mean? The more brain we have, the less frequent are the breakdowns. The less brain we have, the less nutrition we need. At some point the costs of breakdowns offsets the additional costs of nutritions. Like broken bones, insufficient brain sizes (breakdowns) are part of the evolutionary game.

So what happens when I do not have enough brain? Not winning a Nobel-prize is not enough. It must be so severe that I either don't have offspring, or my offspring does not reproduce.

Something has to go wrong, really wrong.

Could it be that simple?

Abstract

This post presents the faulty neoteny hypothesis as an attempt to explain findings in studies about pedophiles and homosexuals. Humans in comparison with chimpanzees mature at a much lower speed, with brain maturation at an even lower speed. The faulty neoteny hypothesis assumes that this maturation process is even further deminished in persons who developed a paraphilia. 

Introduction

Pedophilia has been the origin for this type of amateur armchair research. Pedophilia does not make much sense seen from an evolutionary point of view - this is the common understanding. More scientific oriented authors call it maladapted and have difficulties explaining its current existence from an evolutionary point of view. However, they tried to make it fit into current social settings - and that might be the reason for the failure. Starting with the question "Could pedophilia have made sense some thousand years ago?" this investigation turned to human evolution.

Short summary of human evolution

The modern human evolved from hominids, with the chimpanzee and the bonobos as our closest cousins in the animal kingdom. At least twice during the human evolution the brain increased drastically in size. The first increase might be related to the self-domestication of humans, which changed the group dynamic of human bands. The social intelligence hypothesis claims that this domestication was the cause for the brain size increase. This view is supported by the russian silver fox experiment and by comparisons of dogs with wolves. The second increase happened during the stone age and might be related to the mastering of crafts. 

This caused the neoteny in humans, a prerequisite for human society. In short, neoteny describes the retention of juvenile traits in otherwise mature adults. The famous russian silver fox experiment tried to breed foxes that are tame as a breed, not as a result of individual training. The duration in which the young animals showed the friendly behavior towards siblings and caregivers was extended. Similar, dogs retain the one-to-one relationship with group members, while wolves resort to a pecking order. Dogs need to establish a relationship with every new member of the group from scratch, pretty much like humans do. This requires social intelligence and that requires learning capabilities.

Hypothesis

The faulty neoteny hypothesis assumes that the maturation process, which in its weakened form causes neoteny, is further diminished. This leads to unfinished developments in humans. Several researchers and practitioners have postulated the arrested development hypothesis. M. Griesemer compares pedophilia with dyslexia, assuming that a major brain development process during puberty fails. "Arrested" might be a misnomer, since it implies that there are causes that prevent development. Rather than understanding the development as actively prevented, the faulty neoteny hypothesis considers a breakdown of the development. If neoteny already bent development, it gets broken in some individuals.

Sexual orientation

Hazan and Shaver in 1987 assumed that human sexual orientation consists of a sexual arousal and a romantic attraction. According to them this attraction is based on the parent-child-attachment and a rather modern phylogenetic development. They did not discuss the influence of neoteny. Neoteny makes the heritage of romantic attraction even more plausible. However, this attraction is not purely neotenous. Monogame animals with parental care for the young often show an elaborate courting  behavior as seen in birds. It is reasonable to assume that the "spouse" replaces the parent as a provider. Hence, the romantic attraction is less based on sexual reproduction and more on an attachment that fulfills some demand. 

At some point during childhood or adolescence a lovemap gets formed. There are several theories, how a desire get erotizised. How this exactly happens is beyond this post. The sexual arousal can be understood as a reflex like reaction onto clues of the desired company. The desire need not to be of sexual nature.

Research has shown that sexuality in humans is a learned behavior - it is no longer a pure instinct. It could be that comforting experience gets reinforced. The company of children provides a less aggressive environment than that of age peers. Hence some prefer the company of children to age peers. When a lovemap gets formed, the presence of clues of the desired partner causes arousal. This establishment might be under the control of a different process than the one responsible for the personality development. If the sexual arousal gets fixated in form of a lovemap before the person experiences heterosexual attraction, then arousal gets caused by the "wrong" clues. This asynchronicity could cause a failure of establishment of the correct heterosexual orientation. 

Mechanism

When humans domesticated themselves, somehow juvenile traits were preferred. That basically means that maturity is delayed. This delay might be due to an inhibitory process or due to the maturity process not working at full strength. The first assumes the existence of an additional process while the latter is a more simplistic explanation. Hence, the delayed maturation in humans might be better explained by a weakened maturation process that means a process that is not up to the speed as in our cousins in the animal kingdom.

For a reason, boys and girls do not mature at the same speed, the onset of puberty in boys is at a later age than in girls. Hence, we can assume that the process is weaker in boys. Moreover, everybody knows some children who either look much younger or much older than their age. Hence, we can assume that the maturation process does not work like a clock in humans. Some children mature earlier if the process is stronger; others mature later, if the process is weaker. In the extreme case, the process stops - which seems to be the case in the adults affected by the Highlander syndrome.

The human body does not grow uniformly during childhood, there are several developmental stages. Moreover, the brain usually does not fully mature until the age of 25 years. While bodily changes are visible, the mental development can only be guessed. The myelination of the brain is a process that goes on for several years. Young and old people have less myelinated white matter. Simple put, myelination creates a fatty insulation around the axons, something that should be visible on structural MRI. James Cantor has reported a missing white matter in pedophiles in comparison to his control group. According to the faulty neoteny hypothesis, he could have looked at brains in the juvenile stage. 

Gaffney and Berlin in 1984 assumed a hypothalamic - pituitary - gonadal dysfunction in pedophiles, with elevated levels of LH as a response to a GRH infusion. This might be relevant since the HPG axis is responsible for the sexual development. Moreover, the HPG-axis shares parts with the HPA axis that manages stress. The letters H, P, G, and A denote certain endocrine glands. The endocrine system controls the growth of the human body and must have been affected by the human evolution. To a layman's eyes, it looks like the neotenous feature of better stress handling has negatively impacted the development.

Why it could be true

Studies show that pedophiles have had on average more head injuries during childhood than the controls. This could be due to a clumsy behavior, where motor control is still insufficient. Delayed speech acquisition might be another indication of coordination problems. Fine motor skills are much about the correct timing of muscle actions. Myelination does change the speed at which the signals are traveling along the nerves. A disturbed myelination could be responsible for that. 

The missing white matter study by James Cantor & Co specifies a lower density of white matter. This lower density could be due to fewer connections or due to thinner connections. The latter would be without myelination. The interesting fact about myelination is that both young and old people have less white matter than humans in their prime. The question to ask would be: How much do pedophile brains differ in their biological age from their chronological age?" The faulty neoteny hypothesis would assume that pedophiles retain their juvenile brain characteristics. 

Pedophiles are reported to have emotional congruence with children. Some therapists denote this as an arrested emotional development. Again, using the simplicity approach, I assume that the emotional development simple came to a stand still. Hence, those pedophiles are eternal "Peter Pans". 

Since the onset of puberty in boys is delayed in comparison to girls, boys are more affected by neoteny. This would also make them more exposed to a faulty neoteny. Hence, the presented hypothesis supports the finding that most pedophiles seem to be male.

Studies also reported that pedophiles on average are 2.3 cm smaller than the controls. This would indicate that the growth process ended to early. Growth is influenced by testosterone, for which the mentioned HPG axis is responsible.

Handiness is higher in pedophiles than in controls and seem to indicate brain organization. The assumption is that a lesser organized brain would lead to a handiness by chance, that means 50% for each. A fully organized brain in the animal kingdom is one where all instincts are present at birth. Those newborns get up right after birth and move along their parents. This usually means that newborns have a fully myelinated brain. Humans however, are the other extreme. Hence, one could conclude: the more neotenous the individual is, the lesser organized is the brain, which would mean fewer or weaker instincts.

Child advocates claim that children on the day they turn into legal adults somehow obtain sexual knowledge, no teaching required. This no-sex-education attitude implies a belief that sexuality is instinctive. This belief is ridiculed on child love chat boards. Assuming that there is some truth to it, the conclusion is that heterosexual persons experience it as an instinct, while pedophiles do not. This is consistent with the assumption of a lesser organized brain at birth in pedophiles. The heterosexual instinct was not present when the lovemaps were formed. This correlates with the observation that homosexuals often do not behave gender conform during childhood. The observation implies the assumption that gender conformity is innate, hence an instinct.

Common cause and pedophilia

So far, nothing special for pedophiles has been considered. Nothing indicates, why the affected persons should be romantically attracted to children. The reasons for not being attracted to the opposite gender could be biological, but the replacement could be due to circumstances. Hence a future homosexual will miss the innate attraction to the opposite sex, but it is the comforting experience with same-sex age peers that renders him/her homosexual. 

The company of children might be preferred for several reasons. The presence of children lowers the aggressivity in adults and adolescents. Moreover, children are more emotional than adults. For youths, who are overly emotional, they satisfy a demand for emotional contact. Moreover, faulty neoteny might be responsible for a developmental delay. Then, contact with age peers might get challenging and children are again the easier company. The term "age peers" denote peers of similar chronological age, not of the equivalent biological age, which might be lower in those affected.

How and when a sexual orientation gets established is beyond this post. It seems that the sexual orientation gets fixated at a certain time. How solid this fixation is, is still unclear. Women seem to have a higher fluidity, while forced sexual orientation changes in men have failed.

However, faulty neoteny assumes that development is not finished. This would imply that the sexual orientation could be changed by some measures. Aversion therapy did not work, and the reason for that might be that aversion therapy attacks the wrong end - it tried to change the arousal instead of the romantic attraction. MC Seto comments on a study showing a lessened pedophilic attraction, that the effect was there
"even though treatment focused on intimacy,relationship skills and self-esteem, rather than modification of sexual arousal patterns." (bold by me). This astonishing result supports the view in this post that the attraction part of sexual orientation is based on attachment rather than a sexual reproduction instinct.

Conclusion

The faulty neoteny hypothesis assumes that the maturation process in some individuals is slowed down to a standstill and therefore some developmental processes never finish. This assumption is so far consistent with the findings and explains, why a normal heterosexual orientation is not acquired. 

Different degrees of neoteny in humans will lead to different outcomes. While a lesser amount of neoteny leads to premature adolescence and adulthood, the question of "too much neoteny" has not yet been answered.

Disclaimer

This poster knows nothing about psychology or neurobiology and does not even have a PhD. The explanation in this post is based on common sense and some thinking. Hence, all the stated things are not automatically assumed to be true for everybody with a paraphilia.

Missing white matter - why is it important?

James Cantor PhD from CAMH made the discovery of missing white matters in some of his research subjects, which i discussed recently. It is a brilliant discovery, since virtually nobody looks for the expected amount of this cabling matter in fMRI images.

White matter denotes the area filled mostly with the dendrites and the axons of neurons, while the lump with the nucleus sits in the gray matter. Electrical impulses travel along those tentacles, a bit faster on those with a myelin sheath than along those without. Hence calling it cabling matter is quite correct. Without any cabling matter, our brains simply wouldn't work. But what are the effects if we are missing a bit here and there?

Everybody knows and loves cars. Imagine you are driving in winter time on an icy road. Something happens and you have to break. The foot presses onto a pedal, hydraulic pressure increases by that action and via brake lines is transferred to the wheels. Here, cylinders are expanding and moving brake pads onto disk or drums. Modern cars have ABS. This system has wheel speed sensors, which are connected to a controller by some cabling matters. Another set of cabling goes to valves. If everything works fine, this system will prevent the wheels from locking; and even on an icy road one maintains full control over the vehicle.

What we have here is a control system (the ABS) on top of another one (human - pedal - brake lines - brakes). Even newer cars have traction control and automatic brakes. The latter are intended to avoid rear-end collisions. Those are control systems on top of the other two. One can think of them as a hierarchy of control systems.

The brain is a more advanced version of that. Not only do we have neurons in our brains, we also have endocrine glands. In addition to that, our brain is getting rewired all the time. Our reflexes are like the simple brake system in cars, and everything else sits on top of it. Like the ABS in cars, those higher brain functions work like moderators.

Pretty often, questions with respect to mental illnesses are formulated as "What causes symptome X?" This type of questions shows the traces of the medical heritage, where viruses cause illnesses like influenza. Understanding the brain as a hierarchy of control circuits, one should rather ask "why aren't the emotions sufficiently moderated in bipolar disorders?"

I wonder, if missing white matter is responsible for that. The missing white matter discovery by James Cantor seems to be more important than commonly known. To my layman's eyes some psychological disorders look like missing some kind of moderation at some level. Often one reads the phrase "loss of control", which is similar to a car with a broken ABS on an icy road. If missing white matter were responsible, then we could find a treatment that rebuilds it. Missing white matter also rises the question, what prevented its growth in the first place? Already we suspect that children placed under lot of duress and stress during their childhood show long lasting mental damages later in life. It seems like higher hormonal values of cortisol and adrenaline might have had an impact. So how can we counter the effects?


If i were a benevolent dictator, i would initiate research programs:

• one for looking into the missing white matter indicator for certain disorders,
• another one in laboratories: what prevents and what encourages white matter growth.

Psychotherapy means learning on a rational and emotional level. Often it means to recognise signals of distress or to identify certain situations. Then "supporting thoughts" should aid us to get through the situation. From my personal experience i know that psychotherapy can be demanding and one gets a headache from them. Taking a paracetamol might be ill-advised,  it could harm the establishment of new circuitry. If pharmacy had something else, something that would make white matter growth easier - maybe it could support traditional psychotherapy.

Disclaimer

I'm not a psychiatrist, neurobiologist, or psychologist. The views presented here are based on common knowledge, which might not be scientifically correct.
Google on "white matter disorder" gives several results, among other this, where the connection between white matter and bipolar disorder is mentioned.

Addendum 2015-09-09: James Cantor reported the missing white matter, he also reported a lower IQ among his pedophile subjects. Glial cells are considered to be related to IQ, the more glial cells the higher the IQ. Glial cells provide the myelin sheathing of axons, hence contribute to white matter density. It could be as simple as JC has seen a lower IQ on his sMRI pictures.

Why is everything upside down?

I mean, every morning the sun goes up in the east, she set in the west. During night, i can see the stars wandering from the east to the west. Hence, for me it's obvious that the universe revolves around the earth (or me). But Copernicus made sense of the movements of the few wandering stars, now called planets, by putting the sun into the center. This makes me think.

Sexual orientation sounds pretty much like a direction one looks into in order to find a mate. Or like an arrow pointing to the right one. But that makes no sense for bisexual persons. Kinsey showed some diagrams, which resemble a profile.

Edited 2015-08-30: Kinsey presented his results as a profile, while he used a one-dimensional model for sexuality. Newer research uses an additional axis of intensity for the definition of sexual orientation. However, many researchers are measuring the intensity of sexual arousal for each age/gender group.

We are more or less attracted to others. The sexual orientation science put humans into categories and measures if we are attracted to them. But for me those categories make no sense. Mostly they are gender and age based, leading to homosexual or heterosexual, pedophile, hebephile and teleiophile categories. There is no division into latino's or nordic blonds. Moreover, most boylovers are attracted to boys who go through puberty - right at the border between prepubescent and pubescent. This confuses boylovers, since they don't understand if they are pedophiles or hebephiles. It seems that the categorization is somewhat arbitrary. Shouldn't we ask, what are you attracted to? Then we might know what we are looking for. If we look at the wrong categories, then we might never understand what makes certain others so attractive.

Sex conversion therapy tried to break sexual arousal. Those therapists punished their patients if they showed arousal to clues. I say "punished", since giving electric shocks is nothing else. This therapy is based on the understanding that arousal causes desire. But haven't we learned to react positively to signs of our desire. Aren't we on the lookout for the right one? Maybe, arousal is a mirror image of our desire. Then those conversion therapies had to fail.

Some researchers are looking for single direct causes of pedophilia. So far they didn't had any success. If we compare the normal sexual development with a train on rails, then we might see a problem. Most trains arrive at their destination. Some do not - they crash, break down or derail. A train might go downhill and the brakes are failing. Getting more and more speedy the next curve is a challenge too much to master. The train jumps out from the track. Did the brakes moved the train sideways? Of course not. All disasters happen by a chain of events. Pneumatic train brakes can fail in many different ways. Brake lines can get disconnected, holes are punched into storage tanks, storage tanks can be depleted by human mistake. All different root causes are making the train go faster than advised.

There are indications that homosexuality has something to do with the X-chromosomes, since extreme skewing of X-chromosomes in mothers is correlated with a higher number of homosexual sons. The X-chromosome contains several genes that influence the brain development. Here we might have one tripping root cause, but homosexuality manifests itself only after a chain of events. Researchers are looking for root causes, but the layout of the rail tracks and the existence of switches is critical for understanding the chain.

Sometimes, we have to lean back and investigate other explanations, switching cause and effect, looking for chain of events and evil cycles. Sometimes, we assume that things exist, when they do not. Freud claimed that humans are born bisexual. He assumes that children are sexual, but i think they haven't learned the meaning of the artificial demarcation line located around the belly button. They aren't sexual, but just enjoying bodily pleasure. Some animals aren't homosexual, they are just not picky with whom they enjoy pleasure. Sometimes, things are not caused, but rather not prevented. This might be the case with missing white matter.

Sexual orientation in human adults might be a neotenous thing, which means we should compare human adult sexual behavior with behavior of juvenile animals. Are boys entering puberty later than girls, because they are left behind? Or is it the case that late puberty was evolutionarily selected for? Moreover, that this evolutionary pressure was exercised on boys. I say exercised, because boys enter puberty earlier than decades before. Now, how was this evolutionary pressure exercised?

Missing white matter matters

Summary

The missing white matter finding might indicate a psychological disorder, in this case Asperger's syndrome. This posts contains an alternative explanation of the findings by James Cantor & Co.

Lying with statistics

Many decades ago the consensus bureau in Germany found statistical support for something that have been told to small children for a long time. The first number they obtained was the number of children per woman. The did it with german precision getting numbers for each district. Using the same approach, they registered the number of storks. When they compared the numbers, they found an enormous support for the European folklore that the stork is responsible for bringing babies to new parents. This example is teached to student so they look out for the undiscovered unknown factor. In the mentioned statistics, the division into rural and urban districts is the explaining variable. In rural areas mothers tend to give birth to more children - the storks nesting in those areas have nothing to do with it. It is just an unrelated coincidence.

Asperger's syndrome in pedophiles

One thing that comes up very often in child love chat boards is the discussion of psychology. Since Pedophiles are seen as mentally ill persons (which by the way is much better than to be considered sub-human scum), several disorders are discussed. There are some conditions that seem to have a very high correlation with pedophilia. There is a remark from a police officer that it is almost a cliche to find Star-Trek memorabilia during a home search. Being a Star-Trek fan is not qualified as an illness, but Asperger's Syndrome is. During psychological evaluations, a test on the Aspergers/Autistic scale seem to be standard. This gets reported many times on chat boards.

Participation on an internet chat forum might restrict the discussion to those who are technically savvy and with a higher than normal intelligence. It might be that the sample of pedophiles on those chat forums is biased towards Aspergers and highly intelligent people. Nevertheless, it is remarked that there are many members with Asperger's (short Aspies).


Asperger's syndrome mainly presents itself with communication deficits. Affected children have difficulties relating to age peers, but are excellent with adults or younger children. Adults often refer to them as "little professors". Everyone know those geeky boys, who have no chance with same-aged girls. This is actually a very simple explanation for some pedophiles.


Recent research has challenged the notion of missing empathy i autistic children. In fact they experience some kind of overload, they can't deal with the simultaneous onslaught of verbal and nonverbal communication signals. Hence autistic children tend to blend humans out. People scoring high on the autistic scale, but on the side of Asperger's disorder don't blend people out, but focus on one kind of input at a time. Often they are very logical and show a left brain dominance.

Circuitry

The polyvagal theory describes some neural circuitry issues. Stephen Porges links misfiring of the polyvagal system to attention disorders and autism. The missing engagement of the social muscles in the inner ear and of the face makes listening and nonverbal communication a challenge to those affected. When I say circuitry, I actually mean two different systems. One system are neural connections, like white brain matter. The other system comprises hormonal releases by endocrine glands. The hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis is related to stress. The first two glands in this axis are also part of the hypothalamic–pituitary–gonadal axis which might be dysfunctional in pedophiles according to Gaffney and Berlin. This means that stress could have influenced the development of pedophilia. Moreover, released hormones work like switches putting the brain into different modes. The neurons on the other hand direct releases of hormones. Hence, the circuitry of the brain comprises many loops.


The brain works like a massive parallel system. Simplified, humans have a paleomammal system comprising the amygdala among others, a frontal cortex, and many other systems. The paleomammal system is responsible for gut feelings while the frontal cortex is home to our consciousness. During puberty a myelination process happens in the brain and we change from a child like personality to an adult personality. This puberty time has been pinpointed as the assumed time frame when pedophilia manifests. Others pinpoint the event to prenatal changes, that means while the fetus is in the womb, leading to "born-this-way" arguments. However, at some time during the development, a certain establishment of circuitry is supposed to happen.


Understanding the brain as a massive parallel system assigns a moderating or controlling function to the frontal cortex. This means the frontal cortex influences the function of the paleomammal system via some connective tissue. Without a moderation that paleomammal part can either ran wild as in uncontrolled, or it is in a kind of stasis.

White matter

The flamboyant researcher James Cantor explains in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JB6zwvBtDK8 his research on pedophilia and some research results. Besides the low-IQ-findings, the major point is the missing white matter. He explains pedophilia as a kind of cross-wiring as in connective tissue -  instead of going from A to B it goes from A to C. But then the question arises, why does it have to go to C, why not D, E, F and so on. If it were a cross-wiring, should there be more white matter some place else? The last question takes this "cross-wiring" a bit too literally.

The missing white matter can explain two different scenarios. The first one is absence of any excitation. There are indeed persons who experience asexuality. Moreover, it would explain why autistic persons and persons with a severe attachment disorder do not react. Only the dorsal part is engaged.  The other explanation is more mundane. The paleomammal system does what it can do alone in the absence of moderation. It too is an example of phylogenetic hierarchy. When the more evolved structures fail, more primitive systems are activated. Normally a person will adapt to the culture. This requires a lot of social contacts and internalization of social values. Hence in normal humans, the paleomammal system is dominated. If one lacks white matter, it certainly has impact on the moderation. Hence ancient gut feelings will surface and adaptive behavior will show up.


The russian silver fox experiment has shown that behavior has strong biological roots. It was an experiment with the aim of explaining the taming of wolves and their transformation into dogs. Not only have they succeed in only 10 generations, they have also caused signs of neoteny in those foxes. This experiment has been repeated and even the opposite has been carried out. The researchers managed to breed vicious foxes. Hence a strong biological base for behavior can not be denied.


The consistent qualities of pedophilia might be due to evolution. It is know that boylovers appreciate boyish behavior more than beauty, while girllovers are attracted to the female equivalent to the bud of a flower. Feierman 1990 gives some examples of pedophilic behaviors with a strong evolutionary cause. Those behavioral traits might have been grown since the first brain increase happened some hundred thousand years ago.


Hence, it seems reasonable to assume that missing white matter reduces moderation of the affected parts. Reduced moderation means less suppression of biology based behavioral traits. Moreover, less moderation also means less damping on the social communication signal, which then might lead to an overload - exactly the symptoms of Asperger's syndrome. Could it be that James Cantor statistically found a higher share of Aspies among his sample? This could be true, if missing white matter had been identified as common in Aspies. But this hasn't happened - or more precisely "has not happened yet".


Brain imaging techniques have not yet identified a clear common pathology for Asperger's syndrome (mentioned on wikipedia) - which does not mean there isn't anything brain related to be found. Even the smart James Cantor looked first at grey matter, before it made click and he discovered the lack of white matter. Discovery might be the wrong word, since he didn't find anything on the sMRI pictures, he missed something. Hence, one has to pose the hypothesis that Aspies are lacking white matter, for professionals to do the studies and to find out.

Is Asperger's syndrome the missing link?

Cantor & Co theorize that some prenatal events may have had big influence on neurobiology and sexual orientation. The latest paper by 4 students and him tested a hypothesis by Michael C. Seto about a correlation of minor physical anomalies and pedophilia, indicating prenatal influences. A critique of that paper asks for a temporal linkage between those prenatal events and the establishment of pedophilia during puberty. The argument is: if at any time between birth and puberty the child is "normal" in any aspect, then there should be no correlation between prenatal condition and sexual orientation. This means, between birth and manifestation of pedophilia, something has to be different in those children. Something that is so heavy that it impacts the development of "normal" sexuality.

By the way, in order to show up on the statistics, only a few more Aspies are required on the pedophile group. The explanation in this post does not mean that every pedophile is affected by Asperger's syndrome, only that there is a higher percentage of those.

Disclaimer

This presents amateur research. As such it is not backed by any study carried out under supervision. Instead it is an attempt to explain certain facts, which i have been confronted with. Even though i am discussing Asperger's syndrome and missing white matter, this post does not imply anything about any person. Diagnosing people with mental illnesses is the business of mental health professionals, not mine. I'm in this matter a layman.