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Abstracts
  • Wehrum, S., Klucken, T., Kagerer, S., Walter, B., Hermann, A., Vaitl, D., & Stark, R. (2013). Gender commonalities and differences in the neural processing of visual sexual stimuli. The Journal of Sexual Medicine, 10(5), 1328–1342. https://doi.org/10.1111/jsm.12096

    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.

  • Schienle, A., Schäfer, A., Stark, R., & Vaitl, D. (2009). Long-term effects of cognitive behavior therapy on brain activation in spider phobia. Psychiatry Research, 172(2), 99–102. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pscychresns.2008.11.005

    This functional magnetic resonance imaging study investigated long-term effects of cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) in individuals suffering from spider phobia. Ten female patients who had shown positive immediate CBT effects were invited to take part in a 6-month follow-up investigation. Here, the patients, along with eight non-phobic females, were presented with the same pictures depicting spiders, generally disgust-inducing, generally fear-inducing and neutral content, which they had viewed 6 months earlier. Patients' self-report and overt behavior indicated a positive long-term clinical improvement. Related hemodynamic changes included an increase in medial orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) activity. As the medial OFC is involved in emotion-related learning, especially in the representation of positive stimulus-outcome associations, we conclude that the medial OFC effect constitutes the neuronal basis of the lasting positive CBT outcome. Activity to disorder-irrelevant pictures decreased across the sessions in the lateral OFC and in the insula, which most likely reflects general habituation.

  • Stark, R., Schienle, A., Walter, B., Kirsch, P., Blecker, C., Ott, U., Schäfer, A., Sammer, G., Zimmermann, M., & Vaitl, D. (2004). Hemodynamic effects of negative emotional pictures - a test-retest analysis. Neuropsychobiology, 50(1), 108–118. https://doi.org/10.1159/000077948

    We investigated subjective and hemodynamic responses towards disgust-inducing, fear-inducing, and neutral pictures in a functional magnetic resonance imaging study. Within an interval of 1 week, 24 male subjects underwent the same block design twice in order to analyze possible response changes to the repeated picture presentation. The results showed that disgust-inducing and fear-inducing scenes provoked a similar activation pattern in comparison to neutral scenes. This included the thalamus, primary and secondary visual fields, the amygdala, the hippocampus, and various regions of the prefrontal cortex. During the retest, the affective ratings hardly changed. In contrast, most of the previously observed brain activations disappeared, with the exception of the temporo-occipital activation. An additional analysis, which compared the emotion-related activation patterns during the two presentations, showed that the responses to the fear-inducing pictures were more stable than the responses to the disgust-inducing ones.

  • Schienle, A., Stark, R., Walter, B., Blecker, C., Ott, U., Kirsch, P., Sammer, G., & Vaitl, D. (2002). The insula is not specifically involved in disgust processing: an fMRI study. Neuroreport, 13(16), 2023–2026. https://doi.org/10.1097/00001756-200211150-00006

    fMRI studies have shown that the perception of facial disgust expressions specifically activates the insula. The present fMRI study investigated whether this structure is also involved in the processing of visual stimuli depicting non-mimic disgust elicitors compared to fear-inducing and neutral scenes. Twelve female subjects were scanned while viewing alternating blocks of 40 disgust-inducing, 40 fear-inducing and 40 affectively neutral pictures, shown for 1.5 s each. Afterwards, affective ratings were assessed. The disgust pictures, rated as highly repulsive, induced activation in the insula, the amygdala, the orbitofrontal and occipito-temporal cortex. Since during the fear condition the insula was also involved, our findings do not fit the idea of the insula as a specific disgust processor.

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