"Pornographic binges" as a key characteristic of males seeking treatment for compulsive sexual behaviors: Qualitative and quantitative 10-week-long diary assessment.

Background and aims Compulsive sexual behaviors (CSBs) are an important clinical and social issue. Despite the increasing number of studies, some of CSB's aspects remain under-investigated. Here, we explore the nature of CSB, such as binge pornography use and masturbation (PuM), and verify the correspondence between self-perceived factors leading to such behavior with its measures obtained in a diary assessment. Methods Semi-structuralized interviews with nine treatment-seeking males aged 22-37 years (M = 31.7, SD = 4.85) were followed by a questionnaire and a 10-week-long diary assessment, allowing us to acquire real-life daily patterns of CSB. Results Six out of nine subjects experienced binge (multiple hours or times a day) PuM. All subjects presented a high level of anxiety and perceived PuM as a way to regulate mood and stress. Data collected in the diary assessment uncovered a high diversity in the patterns of sexual behaviors (such as frequency of regular and binge PuM) and its correlates. Binge PuM was related to decreased mood and/or increased stress or anxiety. The causal relation between these correlates remains undetermined. Discussion and conclusions Binge PuM seems to be one of the most characteristic behavior among males who are seeking treatment for CSB and is related to the feeling of losing control over one's sexual activity. CSB individuals indicate a variety of binge triggers. Also, diary assessment data indicate that specific correlates of binge PuM (decreased mood, increased stress, and anxiety) differ between subjects. It suggests the existence of significant individual differences in binge PuM behaviors, and a need to study these differences, as it may help guide personalized treatment.

Patterns of brain and cardiovascular activation while solving rule-discovery and rule-application numeric tasks.

It is known that solving mental tasks leads to tonic increase in cardiovascular activity. Our previous research showed that tasks involving rule application (RA) caused greater tonic increase in cardiovascular activity than tasks requiring rule discovery (RD). However, it is not clear what brain mechanisms are responsible for this difference. The aim of two experimental studies was to compare the patterns of brain and cardiovascular activity while both RD and the RA numeric tasks were being solved. The fMRI study revealed greater brain activation while solving RD tasks than while solving RA tasks. In particular, RD tasks evoked greater activation of the left inferior frontal gyrus and selected areas in the parietal, and temporal cortices, including the precuneus, supramarginal gyrus, angular gyrus, inferior parietal lobule, and the superior temporal gyrus, and the cingulate cortex. In addition, RA tasks caused larger increases in HR than RD tasks. The second study, carried out in a cardiovascular laboratory, showed greater increases in heart rate (HR), systolic blood pressure (SBP), diastolic blood pressure (DBP), and mean arterial pressure (MAP) while solving RA tasks than while solving RD tasks. The results support the hypothesis that RD and RA tasks involve different modes of information processing, but the neuronal mechanism responsible for the observed greater cardiovascular response to RA tasks than to RD tasks is not completely clear.

Can Pornography be Addictive? An fMRI Study of Men Seeking Treatment for Problematic Pornography Use.

Pornography consumption is highly prevalent, particularly among young adult males. For some individuals, problematic pornography use (PPU) is a reason for seeking treatment. Despite the pervasiveness of pornography, PPU appears under-investigated, including with respect to the underlying neural mechanisms. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we examined ventral striatal responses to erotic and monetary stimuli, disentangling cue-related 'wanting' from reward-related 'liking' among 28 heterosexual males seeking treatment for PPU and 24 heterosexual males without PPU. Subjects engaged in an incentive delay task in the scanner, in which they received erotic or monetary rewards preceded by predictive cues. Blood-oxygen-level-dependent responses to erotic and monetary cues were analyzed and examined with respect to self-reported data on sexual activity collected over the 2 preceding months. Men with and without PPU differed in their striatal responses to cues predicting erotic pictures but not in their responses to erotic pictures. PPU subjects when compared with control subjects showed increased activation of ventral striatum specifically for cues predicting erotic pictures but not for cues predicting monetary gains. Relative sensitivity to cues predicting erotic pictures vs monetary gains was significantly related to the increased behavioral motivation to view erotic images (suggestive of higher 'wanting'), severity of PPU, amount of pornography use per week, and number of weekly masturbations. Our findings suggest that, similar to what is observed in substance and gambling addictions, the neural and behavioral mechanisms associated with the anticipatory processing of cues specifically predicting erotic rewards relate importantly to clinically relevant features of PPU. These findings suggest that PPU may represent a behavioral addiction and that interventions helpful in targeting behavioral and substance addictions warrant consideration for adaptation and use in helping men with PPU.

Social cognition in neuropsychiatric populations: a comparison of theory of mind in schizophrenia and mesial temporal lobe epilepsy.

Social cognition deficits are observed both in patients with schizophrenia (SCZ) and in patients with mesial temporal lobe epilepsy (MTLE). This may be due to dysfunction of the amygdala network, which is a common feature of both diseases. In this study, SCZ (n = 48) or MTLE (n = 31) and healthy controls (HC, n = 47) completed assessments of mentalising (Reading Mind in the Eyes Test, RMET) and basic cognitive processing, e.g., working memory, executive functions and psychomotor speed (Trail-Making Test B and Digit Symbol). SCZ were also assessed with the Positive And Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS). We found that the RMET scores of the two clinical groups were similar (p > 0.05) and lower than in the HCs (SCZ: p < 0.05; MTLE: p < 0.001). In the next step, SCZ were split into two groups with respect to the level of symptoms. Analysis of the RMET scores revealed no differences between the HC (M = 25.7 ± 4.1) and POS-LO (M = 25.3 ± 4.8); both groups outperformed the POS-HI group (M = 21.3 ± 5.2) and the MTLE group (M = 20.8 ± 4.6). No differences were found for the median-split with regard to negative symptoms. In SCZ, the mind-reading deficit appears to be associated with the level of positive symptoms. Both POS-HI and MTLE patients present significant mentalising deficits compared to healthy controls.

Visual Sexual Stimuli-Cue or Reward? A Perspective for Interpreting Brain Imaging Findings on Human Sexual Behaviors.

There is an increasing number of neuroimaging studies using visual sexual stimuli (VSS), especially within the emerging field of research on compulsive sexual behaviors (CSB). A central question in this field is whether behaviors such as excessive pornography consumption share common brain mechanisms with widely studied substance and behavioral addictions. Depending on how VSS are conceptualized, different predictions can be formulated within the frameworks of Reinforcement Learning or Incentive Salience Theory, where a crucial distinction is made between conditioned and unconditioned stimuli (related to reward anticipation vs. reward consumption, respectively). Surveying 40 recent human neuroimaging studies we show existing ambiguity about the conceptualization of VSS. Therefore, we feel that it is important to address the question of whether VSS should be considered as conditioned stimuli (cue) or unconditioned stimuli (reward). Here we present our own perspective, which is that in most laboratory settings VSS play a role of reward, as evidenced by: (1) experience of pleasure while watching VSS, possibly accompanied by genital reaction; (2) reward-related brain activity correlated with these pleasurable feelings in response to VSS; (3) a willingness to exert effort to view VSS similarly as for other rewarding stimuli such as money; and (4) conditioning for cues predictive of VSS. We hope that this perspective article will initiate a scientific discussion on this important and overlooked topic and increase attention for appropriate interpretations of results of human neuroimaging studies using VSS.

What Is the Effect of Basic Emotions on Directed Forgetting? Investigating the Role of Basic Emotions in Memory.

Studies presenting memory-facilitating effect of emotions typically focused on affective dimensions of arousal and valence. Little is known, however, about the extent to which stimulus-driven basic emotions could have distinct effects on memory. In the present paper we sought to examine the modulatory effect of disgust, fear, and sadness on intentional remembering and forgetting using widely used item-method directed forgetting (DF) paradigm. Eighteen women underwent fMRI scanning during encoding phase in which they were asked either to remember (R) or to forget (F) pictures. In the test phase all previously used stimuli were re-presented together with the same number of new pictures and participants had to categorize them as old or new, irrespective of the F/R instruction. On the behavioral level we found a typical DF effect, i.e., higher recognition rates for to-be-remembered (TBR) items than to-be-forgotten (TBF) ones for both neutral and emotional categories. Emotional stimuli had higher recognition rate than neutral ones, while among emotional those eliciting disgust produced highest recognition, but at the same time induced more false alarms. Therefore, when false alarm corrected recognition was examined the DF effect was equally strong irrespective of emotion. Additionally, even though subjects rated disgusting pictures as more arousing and negative than other picture categories, logistic regression on the item level showed that the effect of disgust on recognition memory was stronger than the effect of arousal or valence. On the neural level, ROI analyses (with valence and arousal covariates) revealed that correctly recognized disgusting stimuli evoked the highest activity in the left amygdala compared to all other categories. This structure was also more activated for remembered vs. forgotten stimuli, but only in case of disgust or fear eliciting pictures. Our findings, despite several limitations, suggest that disgust have a special salience in memory relative to other negative emotions, which cannot be put down to differences in arousal or valence. The current results thereby support the suggestion that a purely dimensional model of emotional influences on cognition might not be adequate to account for observed effects.