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ABSTRACT IntroductionAbout 30–40% of the population report sexual dysfunction. Although it is well known that the brain controls sexual behavior, little is known about the neural basis of sexual dysfunction. AimTo assess convergence of altered brain activity associated with sexual dysfunction across available functional imaging studies. MethodsWe used activation likelihood estimation meta-analysis to quantify interstudy concordance across 14 functional imaging studies reporting 179 foci from 40 individual analyses involving 191 subjects with sexual dysfunction and 123 controls. Main Outcome MeasureActivation likelihood estimation scores were used to assess convergence of findings. ResultsConsistently decreased brain activity associated with sexual dysfunction was identified in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, ventral striatum, dorsal midbrain, anterior midcingulate cortex, and lateral orbitofrontal cortex. Clinical ImplicationThese findings can serve as a basis for further studies on the pathophysiology of this highly common disorder with the view to development of more-specific treatment strategies. Strength & LimitationsFindings are based on an observer-independent meta-analysis that provides robust evidence for and anatomic localization of altered brain activity related to sexual dysfunction. Our analysis cannot distinguish between the putative sources of sexual dysfunction, but it provides a more ubiquitous and general pattern of related altered neural activity. ConclusionThe identified regions have previously been shown to be critically involved in mediating sexual arousal and to be part of the sympathetic division of the autonomic nervous system. This suggests that the disturbance of brain activity associated with sexual dysfunction primarily affects sexual arousal already at early stages that are controlled by the sympathetic nervous system. 

Abstract Meta‐analytic techniques for mining the neuroimaging literature continue to exert an impact on our conceptualization of functional brain networks contributing to human emotion and cognition. Traditional theories regarding the neurobiological substrates contributing to affective processing are shifting from regional‐ towards more network‐based heuristic frameworks. To elucidate differential brain network involvement linked to distinct aspects of emotion processing, we applied an emergent meta‐analytic clustering approach to the extensive body of affective neuroimaging results archived in the BrainMap database. Specifically, we performed hierarchical clustering on the modeled activation maps from 1,747 experiments in the affective processing domain, resulting in five meta‐analytic groupings of experiments demonstrating whole‐brain recruitment. Behavioral inference analyses conducted for each of these groupings suggested dissociable networks supporting: (1) visual perception within primary and associative visual cortices, (2) auditory perception within primary auditory cortices, (3) attention to emotionally salient information within insular, anterior cingulate, and subcortical regions, (4) appraisal and prediction of emotional events within medial prefrontal and posterior cingulate cortices, and (5) induction of emotional responses within amygdala and fusiform gyri. These meta‐analytic outcomes are consistent with a contemporary psychological model of affective processing in which emotionally salient information from perceived stimuli are integrated with previous experiences to engender a subjective affective response. This study highlights the utility of using emergent meta‐analytic methods to inform and extend psychological theories and suggests that emotions are manifest as the eventual consequence of interactions between large‐scale brain networks.