Ihre Suche
Ergebnisse 2 Einträge
-
We examined the effects of symptom induction on neural activation in blood-injection-injury (BII) phobia. Nine phobic and 10 non-phobic subjects participated in an fMRI study in which they were presented with disorder-relevant, generally disgust-inducing, generally fear-evoking and neutral pictures. We observed diminished medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) activity in patients compared to controls for phobia-relevant and disgust-inducing pictures. The MPFC has been shown to be critically involved in the automatic and effortful cognitive regulation of emotions. Therefore, the results might reflect reduced cognitive control of emotions in BII phobics during the experience of phobic symptoms as well as during states of disgust. The latter response component might be a result of the elevated disgust sensitivity of BII phobics.
-
INTRODUCTION: Few studies so far have directly compared the neural processing of visual sexual stimuli in men and women. Also, most of these studies only compared sexual with neutral stimuli, making it difficult to disentangle sexual stimulus processing from general emotional processing. AIM: The current study aimed to explore gender commonalities and differences in neural activity associated with the processing of visual sexual stimuli in a large sample of 50 men and 50 women. In order to disentangle effects of sexual processing from those of general emotional processing, we employed sexual, neutral, positive, and negative emotional pictures. METHODS: Subjects passively viewed sexual, neutral, positive, and negative emotional pictures during a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) session. Pictures were presented in 24 blocks of five pictures each. Every block was rated immediately after its presentation with respect to valence, arousal, and sexual arousal. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Blood oxygen level dependent responses measured by fMRI and subjective ratings. RESULTS: fMRI analysis revealed a distributed network for the neural processing of sexual stimuli comprising the hypothalamus, the nucleus accumbens, as well as orbitofrontal, occipital, and parietal areas. This network could be identified (i) for both men and women, with men showing overall stronger activations than women and (ii) independent of general emotional arousal or valence effects. CONCLUSION: Our data speak in favor of a common neural network associated with the processing of visual sexual stimuli in men and women. Apart from the observed gender commonalities, overall stronger responses in men were observed that might indicate stronger sexual responsivity in men.
Erkunden
Team
- Vaitl (2)
Eintragsart
Sprache
- Englisch (2)
Thema
- Emotions/physiology
- Adolescent (1)
- Adult (2)
- Amygdala/physiopathology (1)
- Arousal/physiology (1)
- Arousal/*physiology (1)
- *Blood (1)
- Brain Mapping (1)
- Brain/*physiology (1)
- Cerebral Cortex/physiopathology (1)
- Dominance, Cerebral/physiology (1)
- Echo-Planar Imaging (1)
- Fear/physiology (1)
- Female (2)
- Gyrus Cinguli/physiopathology (1)
- Hippocampus/physiopathology (1)
- Humans (2)
- *Image Processing, Computer-Assisted (1)
- Injections/*psychology (1)
- Magnetic Resonance Imaging (1)
- *Magnetic Resonance Imaging (1)
- Male (1)
- Nerve Net/*physiology (1)
- Nucleus Accumbens/physiology (1)
- Pattern Recognition, Visual/physiology (1)
- Personality Inventory (1)
- Phobic Disorders/*physiopathology/psychology (1)
- Photic Stimulation (1)
- Prefrontal Cortex/*physiopathology (1)
- Sex Factors (1)
- Sexual Behavior/*physiology (1)
- Syncope, Vasovagal/physiopathology/psychology (1)
- Thalamus/physiopathology (1)
- Visual Perception (1)