The Taboo Love: Male-Male Erotica as a Potential Sexual Attraction for girls Regulate the Brain Response

In recent years, yaoi, as a subculture with a long history, has gradually become increasingly popular among youth interested in Japanese media and has recently become popular around the world. Yaoi is defined as commercial and fan-created media that thematically focuses on romantic love and pornography between two men, often in a sexually explicit way. Despite the widespread popularity of this subculture, there is a lack of empirical studies on the neural mechanism for enjoying yaoi using reliable research methods. The present study aimed to use functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to explore the neural and behavioral mechanisms exhibited by yaoi fans when they are viewing yaoi images. This study indicated that yaoi begins to influence individuals during puberty, tending to addiction. Also, viewing yaoi images could lead to negative activation in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) of female yaoi fans and affect their behavioral performance. These results embodied a new but taboo sexual orientation evident in the PFC neural response.