in 2015 a man was caught having sex with a tractor turns out he'd had sex with 450 tractors and his personal computer was found with hundreds of images of tractor fetish porn I mean I can't blame him we've all seen cars scientists have recently been studying fetishes in very unique ways to try and understand if there are physical changes in the brains of those with fetishes like if you don't have a fetish is your brain different than those who do and trying to figure out how it might relate to the algorithms made by tech companies
which are potentially now controlling your sexual urges any form of sexual arousal whether it involves a fetish or not follows four physiological Steps step one neuronal processing of information by the brain leading to step two arousal neuronal excitation in your body that may cause you to sweat be on high alert and in some instances get hard nipples step 3 incentive motivation consciously or subconsciously deciding if you are going to continue your excited state and step 4 General response we're talking boners we're talking engorged labias you know what I mean that was a scientific explanation of
getting turned on and what turns you on will vary from person to person and sometimes involves a fetish which is when the sexual arousal process begins due to neuronal processing of a non-genital body part or inanimate object for example being attracted to an inanimate object like a tractor tractor fetish being attracted to a non-genital body part like feet foot fetish one study relying only on observational data try to explain why people were so attracted to armpits armpit fetish and they hypothesize it's because armpits mimic genitals armpits like genitals are covered in coarse hair excrete secretions
and odors so although technically armpits are a non-genital body part it may be a common fetish because your brain kind of thinks of the armpit as a genital now that academic text feels like a mandatory reading for all University students am I right a variety of studies from the 90s tried to claim that radishes were more common in men than in women but recent surveys have found no statistically significant difference between the number of males or females or anything in between who have fetishes but algorithms and tech companies may be impacting this more on that
later one thing that still holds up to academic scrutiny is that the most common fetishes involve your feet a 2007 study of 5 000 people found feet or objects related to feet such as shoes to be the most common fetish and another study of thousands of people found that two-thirds of fetishes relate to Feet socks or shoes the reason foot fetishes are so common is actually a hot debate within the scientific Community one Theory involves your S1 brain touch map the brain folds in your brain right under your skull scene here is where neurons conglomerate
to process the feelings of touch you'll notice that the neurons that detect touch for toes and feet are physically right beside the neurons that detect touch for your genitals for this reason some neuroscientists posit that the physiological overlap in the S1 touch brain map neurons of defeat and genitals maybe why so many people are turned on by both another study on amputees who lost their feet found that they would feel Phantom sexual pleasure in their missing feet sometimes even feeling orgasms from their missing feet one theory is that after amputation the brain's plasticity and rewiring
in the S1 touch brain map with overlapping neurons in foot and genital portions of the brain lobe made the missing feet feel sexual there are also some other competing ideas around this including some evolutionary biologists thinking that deriving pleasure from having your feet touched might encourage you to keep them clean and free from parasites essentially sexual pleasure from feet was maybe evolved to keep you healthy by increasing hygiene around your feet I really hope that when I die I come back as an evolutionary biologist who studies how horny humans are none of these theories are
rooted in fact it's scientists positing hypothesis around why we're so turned on by feet and it's leading us to understand that fetishes are very complicated and really hard to study so the ways that scientists are actually studying them is going into rap models a study using two groups of sexually naive Lab Rats had one group where a small velcro jacket during their first sexual experiences then the other group a control War none when sexually mature the control group displayed normal copulation Behavior whether wearing the jacket or not whereas the jacket group went without their velcro
jacket were unable to achieve sexual arousal a separate study had one group of male rat pups lie on bedding scented with lemon the other group was unscented for their first sexual experience they had the option of two sexually receptive females one scented with lemon one without the control group mated with the two females with the same frequency while the lemon group preferred the lemon scented female interestingly the attraction to these specific features conditions and smells could be blocked by naloxone known for its use in opioid overdose naloxone blocks endorphins from binding to the opioid receptors
in your brain thus blocking the sexual reward that is attributed with the velcro jacket or the smell of the lemons either way the sexual reward for the rats started to be related to objects like a velcro jacket or scents like the smell of lemon extrapolating to humans this means that fetishes may be created through neuroplasticity and exposure to a variety of things outside of genitalia that start to turn humans on exposure and brain plasticity is the same reason why some social scientists think that tech companies are actually starting to control our sexual urges with algorithms
based on what we're seeing on the internet to start a paper called Beyond sexual orientation explains how for the first time in history our sexual arousal and desires are now contained as data online whether you are downloading the app Grindr and disclosing your sexual fetishes openly with the drop down options of leather or feet or you are simply searching for specific porn on your browser tech companies house the data of our private and public desires me downloading Grindr in Canada may feel safe but in another country where homosexuality is illegal this could be a dangerous
app download that now these tech companies have awareness and control of same goes with searching for porn when looking at the top 100 searches on PornHub 16 of them are incest theme for men and nine are incest themed for women and five percent of all porn searches among men are for gay porn but survey data and Facebook reports show that only two to three percent of men identify as gay in the right hands of course this information is safe but as tech companies use algorithms to grow interest in their platforms they take your interest and
try to create experiences on the internet that cater to you this means that they're exposing you to things that they think you'll be interested in and this could be changing your brain if we look specifically at online porn one study using fmri brain scans of 28 men with excessive online porn use and 24 men without it it was found that there was a physical change in the ventral stereom men who were excessively watching porn online this is the part of the brain linked to wanting and involves dopamine dopamine is a neurotransmitter involved to our Evolution
and survival it makes us crave the things we need to survive like food love friendship but also two things related to porn which are novelty and sex surfing porn for long periods of time will keep the dopamine levels high and physically distort the ventrals triatum in your brain as tech companies figure out ways to keep you online whether it's the thirst traps on your Instagram Explorer page or simply typing in a sexual interest on Tick Tock you're now going to get more information and exposure which could be altering the way you see and perceive sex
online and in real life on top of this a lot of online content is considered a super normal stimulus meaning online bodies sex acts and even food are exaggerated versions of normal stimuli and these online images and algorithms amplify these qualities that make them more appealing than the real thing studies with birds show that adding fake supernormal Vivid spotted plaster eggs to a nest makes a mother rather sit on it than a real more pale colored egg or male Jewel beetles will rather copulate with a beer bottle cap as the dimpled bottoms are more intriguing
than a real beetle in a new survey found that 82 percent of people failed when trying to stop watching the super normal stimulus of online pornography social scientists and neuroscientists are working hard right now trying to figure out how all of this online content could be altering our brains but outside of the menacing way that algorithms and the internet can work sometimes consensual sex is amazing and fetishes can be a really exciting part of sex but we all know as our sex lives and our sexual interests go more online we give more opportunity for these
internet companies and these large corporations using algorithms to kind of control the way that we feel and see sexual urges in real life I love this sexy science so leave a comment below what you think about this video I think it could have some very interesting discussions and now I'm going to go apply for a job studying fetishes and rats thank you so much for watching and we will see you soon for a new science video