Ten minutes of mild electrical brain stimulation changed how participants recognised sexualised images of women, according to a University of Exeter study that did not test whether the intervention changed attitudes or behaviour.
The researchers used transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), a non-invasive technique that passes a weak electrical current between electrodes placed on the scalp. The study involved 76 students and compared active stimulation with a sham treatment.¹
The Study Changed the Test Result, Not the Attitude
The experiment examined the "inversion effect", a recognition pattern in which people generally identify upright faces and bodies more accurately than upside-down versions. The difference is usually smaller for objects, which are processed less holistically.
Previous research has found that the upright-recognition advantage is reduced when people view sexualised images of women, but not when they view sexualised images of men. Researchers have interpreted that difference as an indirect perceptual measure associated with objectification.
The inversion effect is a recognition measure rather than a direct test of sexist beliefs. Researchers use differences in the effect as a possible indicator of object-like visual processing, but the measure cannot independently establish a participant's attitudes towards women.
Participants memorised images of male and female models in sexualised poses, shown both upright and inverted. Half received 10 minutes of active tDCS at 1.5 milliamps, while the comparison group received 30 seconds of stimulation intended to reproduce the initial tingling sensation without sustained neuromodulation.
Recognition Of Upright Images Improved
In the sham group, the inversion effect was significantly smaller for sexualised female images than for male images. In the active-stimulation group, recognition of upright female images improved, and the study did not find a statistically significant male–female difference in the inversion effect.
The paper reported a significant interaction between image orientation, target gender and stimulation condition. It also found that the active-stimulation group recognised upright sexualised female images more accurately than the sham group, while the researchers found no comparable change for male images.
Professor Ciro Civile, who led the research, said the findings were "initial evidence" that the way the visual system processes sexualised images of women could be changed, at least temporarily.
"This was a lab study – we didn't measure attitudes or behaviour, and brain stimulation is no cure for sexism – but it gives us a new way to study how objectification works," Civile said.
Researchers Say the Findings Remain Narrow
The study does not show that tDCS makes people less sexist, changes how they behave towards women or prevents sexual objectification outside the laboratory.
The researchers tested recognition during stimulation or immediately afterwards, meaning the experiment did not establish how long the perceptual change lasted. The stimulation lasted 10 minutes, but the duration of any resulting change remains unknown.
The participants were all university students, and the experiment used only sexualised images. The paper also notes that conventional tDCS delivers current relatively diffusely, meaning the experiment cannot identify one precisely defined brain region as responsible for the result.
The intervention changed the observer's stimulation condition rather than the images themselves. Civile said earlier studies had attempted to reduce the same perceptual bias by changing the images, providing humanising information or altering participants' sense of power.
"In both groups saw exactly the same pictures, so the bias seems to lie in how we process the images rather than in the images themselves," Civile said.
The Findings Sit Within a Wider Technology Debate
The research arrives alongside wider reporting about how digital systems can reproduce, amplify or alter gendered representations. Recent TechTimes coverage has examined online misogyny and its offline consequences, as well as AI-generated sexualised images of women.
The Exeter experiment addresses a different question. It does not examine how platforms generate or distribute sexualised material; it tests whether a brief neurostimulation protocol can change a visual-recognition pattern associated with how such images are processed.
The findings were also described by Neuroscience News as a temporary restoration of more holistic visual processing. Its headline said brain stimulation could "stop" sexual objectification, but the publication also acknowledged that the study did not measure real-world attitudes or behaviour.
The research was published in Social Neuroscience by Civile and Arwen Stephens, both affiliated with the University of Exeter.
