Erotic Images Research Articles

The Concealment of Erotic Images in Art History: An Inquiry Inspired by Cave Paintings at the Brazilian Archaeological Site of Serra da Capivara

Dado que las pinturas rupestres brasileñas con un contenido erótico no se publican ampliamente en los libros de historia del arte, surgieron preguntas sobre las razones de su ocultamiento o posible censura: ¿se ocultan estas imágenes o simplemente se desconocen? ¿Se esconderían por su contenido erótico o incluso pornográfico? ¿Qué campos del saber están autorizados para ver y hablar de estas imágenes? Tales indagaciones llevaron esta investigación hacia cuestiones como la relación entre obra de arte y sexualidad, así como entre arte visual e imagen técnica, además de considerar la hipótesis de un abordaje poscolonialista en el caso de su desconocimiento. Se pretende así abordar el lugar de las imágenes eróticas en el contexto artístico, así como el significado mismo de las artes visuales en un mundo lleno de imágenes técnicas.

AN INTIMATE DIALOGUE WITH GOD IN JOHN DONNE’S “HOLY SONNETS”: PETRARCHAN CONTEXT

The purpose of the paper is to study the images of the platonic and courtly in the protagonist’s personal relations with God in J. Donne’s “Holy Sonnets” in the context of the connection with the Petrarchan tradition. In order to accomplish this, a complex approach including elements of biographical, genealogical, typological, hermeneutic, comparative, and structural-semiotic methods of literary analysis has been used. The views of literary critics on the sources of the “Holy Sonnets” (Christian meditative practices, Bible books, traditions of English religious lyrics) have been reviewed, their connection with the Petrarchan poetic tradition has been pointed out and, in this context, one of the possible interpretations of J. Donne’s sonnet sequence has been proposed. It has been shown that three poems of the sequence – XIV, XVII and XIX – are especially important and conceptual for understanding the evolution of the protagonist’s relations with God in the “Holy Sonnets”. In the first of them, feeling his own weakness and impossibility to overcome the devil, J. Donne’s persona begs the Lord to win back his heart from the enemy, using a broad palette of military metaphors typical to the Petrarchan lyrics. However, the Lord, who in sonnets I – XIII is depicted in a Petrarchan manner as distant and completely deaf to the protagonist’s pleas, remains indifferent. In sonnet XVII, which looks similar to the lyrical texts of the “Canzoniere” dedicated to Laura’s death, a notable change in the relationship between the characters takes place. As in the Italian humanist’s poems, the life path of J. Donne’s persona finally turns to heaven after the death of his beloved, and he begins to feel that the loss of earthly love is compensated by the gaining of the Divine one. However, his further relations with God, once again, seem to be built according to the Petrarchan model, most fully described in the last text of the sequence. The sonnet XIX demonstrates all the complexity of the relationship between a human being and the Lord. J. Donne’s persona is constantly dominated by conflicting feelings and emotions, which generally correlates with Petrarchan understanding of the ambivalence of love, best shown by F. Petrarch in the sonnets CXXXII and CXXXIV. Moreover, the poetic vocabulary used by J. Donne in this poem indicates the specific character of his persona’s relations with God, which are supposed to have signs of courtly love, courtly bowing-service. It has been summed up that the protagonist’s relations with the Lord in the “Holy Sonnets” might be interpreted as generally built on the same principles that are immanent in the concept of love in the poetry of Petrarchism. The persona of the English poet, as well as the traditional hero of Petrarchan texts, also suffers from unrequited feelings, longs for reciprocity with all his heart, and, in addition, speaks in the specific metaphorical language. Even if the linguistic practice utilized by the author cannot be considered exclusively Petrarchan, since a similar rhetorical code, in which the experience of spiritual communication with the Lord was described with the help of erotic images, was widely used by the Christian mystics, the sonnet poetic structure is canonical for Petrarchan lyrical discourse and require following the established rules not only in terms of form, but also in terms of content.

(079) Perception of Signals of Sexual Interest in Patients with Schizophrenia

Abstract Introduction Patients with schizophrenia (SCH) face many difficulties in forming and maintaining sexual relationships and often have unmet needs around intimacy. Low satisfaction with sexual relationships has been linked to a decrease in overall quality of life. Single relationship status also correlates with a poorer prognosis. However, the exploration of sources of sexual and relationship deficits in patients is an area that is habitually neglected, and there is little research addressing this phenomenon. Objective Our study aims to identify whether difficulties in forming sexual relationships reported by patients with SCH could be connected to: a) a compromised ability to interpret, recognize and respond to signals of sexual interest b) decreased salience of sexual intimacy. Methods Sample: Twenty male and female patients with schizophrenia and a control group of the same size, matched for demographic parameters, will be recruited from the Study of first episodes of schizophrenia (ESO). ESO is a large prospective database dedicated to the longitudinal follow-up of first-episode patients with SCH which contains a wealth of information on bio-psycho-social markers. Procedure: The variables of interest will be tested by two experiments developed in our laboratory. The first experiment depicts male and female actors showing behavioral displays conveying signals of a) sexual interest, b) neutral but friendly attitude and c) rejection, towards the observer. The second experiment is a simple viewing task designed to assess the salience of erotic stimuli compared to neutral ones. In addition, eye movements and pupil dilation will be measured using the eye-tracking device Eyelink 1000plus. Statistical analysis: A repeated-measures t-test will be used to assess the change in a continuous outcome. Results Preliminary results show that the patients (N=10) spent more time on erotic images (mean time= 884.69 ms) than the control group (N=9) (mean time= 772.14 ms). This difference is not statistically significant (p = 0.21). Currently, more data are being collected. Conclusions The preliminary results demonstrate that there is no difference in the interest in explicit sexual stimuli between patients with SCH and healthy controls. Explicit erotic signals seem to be sexually salient to them, which indicates their interest in sexual intimacy. Our research will further determine whether individuals with SCH have impaired ability to perceive, interpret, and react to signals of sexual interest. The implications of our findings could lead to a formulation of sexual remediation strategies. The study was supported by the Czech Health Research Council, no. NU21J-04-00024 and the Charles University, Fac Med1, GAUK no. 56123. Disclosure No.

Leather nostalgia: Constructed histories of Dutch leathermen through national discourses of tolerance and white innocence

Through following sentiments of nostalgia and loss through leathermen’s personal narratives, and an analysis of 110 influential leather images, this article argues that constructed histories of the Dutch gay male leather scene reflect a nostalgia for a lost white gay masculinity that reproduces Dutch-centric conceptions of tolerance, freedom, and self. In these constructed pasts, the Dutch leather brotherhood purportedly developed as a space of exceptional acceptance, protected from encroaching straight and effeminate gay cultures in the 1970s. These memories feature a conceptualization of sexual freedom as indistinguishable from sexual expression, reflecting ideas of freedom and tolerance rooted in Dutch liberalism. Leather memorialization of sexual freedom mobilizes liberal conceptions of autonomy and self that locate freedom in expression, bound sexual pleasure to the individual, and disconnect it from sociopolitical contexts. In influential erotic images of hyperwhite men covered in black leather and dirt, the rare but exclusive appearance of people of color in racist sexual tropes reveals the racist discourse underlying imaginations of the past erotic scene. These constructed pasts continue to haunt larger fetish culture even after the closure of beloved leather bars—shaping their self-identities into the present, inflecting upon their current participation in leather culture, and creating the meaning they derive from this community.

The Tabernacle as a Sacred Feminine Space: The Development of Mythical Images from Biblical Literature to Medieval Kabbalah

This article compares two biblical accounts: the description of the construction of the Tabernacle (Ex. 25–40), and its connection to the myth of Eve’s creation (Gen. 2). I aim to reveal the literary and symbolic links between “feminine” attributes in these two formative accounts, from their development in biblical literature to their appearances in rabbinic midrash and medieval Kabbalah. My reading seeks to combine gender, myth, and literary study, to explore how erotic images of the sacred were developed and proliferated over generations.

Parsing patterns of reward responsiveness: Initial evidence from latent profile analysis.

Variation in reward responsiveness has been linked to psychopathology. Reward responsiveness is a complex phenomenon that encompasses different temporal dimensions (i.e., reward anticipation or consumption) that can be measured using multiple appetitive stimuli. Furthermore, distinct measures, such as neural and self-report measures, reflect related but distinct aspects of reward responsiveness. To understand reward responsiveness more comprehensively and better identify deficits in reward responsiveness implicated in psychopathology, we examined ways multiple measures of reward responsiveness jointly contribute to distinct psychological problems by using latent profile analysis. Specifically, we identified three profiles of reward responsiveness among 139 female participants based on their neural responses to money, food, social acceptance, and erotic images and self-reported responsiveness to reward anticipation and consumption. Profile 1 (n = 30) exhibited blunted neural responses to social rewards and erotic images, low self-reported reward responsiveness, but average neural responses to monetary and food rewards. Profile 2 (n = 71) showed elevated neural response to monetary rewards, average neural responses to other stimuli, and average self-reported reward responsiveness. Profile 3 (n = 38) showed more variable neural responses to reward (e.g., hypersensitivity to erotic images, hyposensitivity to monetary rewards), and high self-reported reward responsiveness. These profiles were differentially associated with variables generally linked to aberrations in reward responsiveness. For example, Profile 1 was most strongly associated with anhedonic depression and social dysfunction, whereas Profile 3 was associated with risk-taking behaviors. These preliminary findings may help to elucidate ways different measures of reward responsiveness manifest within and across individuals and identify specific vulnerabilities for distinct psychological problems.

Staging the Imagined City: Aretino in Rome and London

AbstractThis article explores the theme of ‘cityscapes’, and Aretino as a writer of the urban experience, by focussing on the city as an unknowable and anonymous space, especially to social outsiders. It will first examine how Aretino portrays Rome in his early comedy Cortigiana (1525) as a confusing and socially stratified space when experienced from its peripheries. A key factor in achieving this is in his mapping of the imagined spaces of the city (the ‘locus’) onto the theatrical stage‐space (the ‘platea’) so that the stage represents the street and the back‐stage represents a hidden world from which both Cortigiana's main characters and indeed the audience are locked out. Those desired spaces of the city are often coded in sexual terms, and so the second half of this article will explore the way in which i modi (the ephemeral erotic images which would shape Aretino's posthumous reputation as a pornographer) would become a visual trope used by seventeenth‐century English writers to conjure up the unseen and imagined interiors of London's suburban brothels and aristocratic boudoirs.

Adverse childhood experiences and hormonal contraception: Interactive impact on sexual reward function.

The current literature suggests that some women are uniquely vulnerable to negative effects of hormonal contraception (HC) on affective processes. However, little data exists as to which factors contribute to such vulnerability. The present study evaluated the impact of prepubertal adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) on reward processing in women taking HC (N = 541) compared to naturally cycling women (N = 488). Participants completed an online survey assessing current and past HC use and exposure to 10 different adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) before puberty (ACE Questionnaire), with participants categorized into groups of low (0-1) versus high (≥2) prepubertal ACE exposure. Participants then completed a reward task rating their expected and experienced valence for images that were either erotic, pleasant (non-erotic), or neutral. Significant interactions emerged between prepubertal ACE exposure and HC use on expected (p = 0.028) and experienced (p = 0.025) valence ratings of erotic images but not pleasant or neutral images. Importantly, follow-up analyses considering whether women experienced HC-induced decreases in sexual desire informed the significant interaction for expected valence ratings of erotic images. For current HC users, prepubertal ACEs interacted with HC-induced decreased sexual desire (p = 0.008), such that high ACE women reporting decreased sexual desire on HC showed substantially decreased ratings for anticipated erotic images compared to both high prepubertal ACE women without decreased sexual desire (p < 0.001) and low prepubertal ACE women also reporting decreased sexual desire (p = 0.010). The interaction was not significant in naturally cycling women reporting previous HC use, suggesting that current HC use could be impacting anticipatory reward processing of sexual stimuli among certain women (e.g., high prepubertal ACE women reporting HC-induced decreases in sexual desire). The study provides rationale for future randomized, controlled trials to account for prepubertal ACE exposure to promote contraceptive selection informed by behavioral evidence.

Erotic images and motives as a broadcast of the dominant social status (Based on the “Kazakh Erotic Novel” by Berik Dzhilkibaev)

In the time leading up to and immediately following the collapse of the USSR, processes of national self-identification in the formerly Soviet republics were revived anew. Ideologues and culture workers mined the distant past for the raw materials with which to re-activate new forms of national identity, and also to distance themselves from the traumas of imperialism. Written and published in the midst of these processes, Berik Dzilkibayev’s 2001 work Kazakh Erotic Novel is something of a mythological text, with ritual elements symbolizing the constant evolution of the fate of nations. This article analyzes Kazakh Erotic Novel from the perspective of psychoanalytic and cognitive literary criticism, while also situating the work historically in post-independence Kazakhstan. The novel narrates the emergence of the newly-independent Kazakh state, with its heightened energy potential, onto the world stage, while simultaneously exploring the act of returning to one’s roots – to the origins of one’s ethnic group – by replicating the act of creation of a society and its accompanying sovereignty. To broadcast the competitiveness of a young Kazakh country on the world stage, the author uses erotic images and motives that have an increased aggressive potential. In Dzilkibayev’s novel the image of the enemy, the hated Soviet Empire, which served as a unifying force for the Kazakhs, takes on the form of another opponent – the West – which is presented as fundamentally opposed to an imagined Eastern mentality. This difference is attributed to structural differences between Western monotheism and Tengrism, the animist religion of the Kazakhs, which took on renewed significance in the post-Soviet era.

Capturing and Sending Nudes: the moral twists, pleasures and dangers of producing and exchanging erotic images online

Resumen En este artículo reflexiono sobre algunos aspectos de la polisemia involucrada en el registro, envío y circulación (autorizada o no) de fotografías digitales de desnudos. Propongo que esta práctica (así como los discursos que conlleva) sea pensada tanto en términos de “un nuevo giro en los regímenes de visualidad, una transición hacia nuevas formas de ver, vivir y simbolizar la desnudez corporal propia y ajena” (Sibilia , 2015, p. 42) y como articulador de los “límites de la sexualidad” (Gregori, 2016), al flexionar las clasificaciones sociales que organizan las normatividades sexuales entre lo aceptable y lo reprobable. Esto involucra una compleja disputa entre la ampliación y la restricción de los límites entre el consentimiento y el abuso, la norma y la transgresión, lo legítimo y lo inmoral, lo sano y lo violento.

Влияние неоконфуцианских взглядов Кайбары Экикэна на творчество писателя Танидзаки Дзюнъитиро

This article is devoted to the gender issue of the early 1930s, which was reflected in the works of Japanese writer Tanizaki Jun’ichirō, who was very sensitive to needs of the Era. Under the influence of popular treatises “Precepts for Children” (和俗童子訓, Wazoku dōjikun, 1711) and “The Great Learning for Women” (女大学, Onna daigaku, с. 1711–1714) of the Confucian scholar of the late XVII century Kaibara Ekiken. Tanizaki Jun’ichirō created the image of a submissive woman, that was demanded by new time. The writer, who in the early 1920s was interested of erotic images of women freed from shackles of the past, together with a whole Japan made a sharp turn towards traditional views of life: he began to form the image of faithful wives and wise mothers, joining the general flow ‘returning to the roots’ of that time. However, almost immediately after the collapse of the militaristic regime, the writer turned away from the traditional Confucian thought of Kaibara Ekiken, reviving his favorite motif — the image of the ‘femme fatale’. Nevertheless, Tanizaki Jun’ichirō retained a special Japanese aesthetic, which he came to the early 1930s: the Japanese woman was still dressed in a kimono, but the evolution of morals and the lack of unspoken requirements for participation in the formation and strengthening of certain ideological standards, which the national state indulged, allowed Tanizaki Jun’ichirō to say that the traditional Japanese woman can be not only a faithful wife and a wise mother, but also an infernal woman who destroys men and instills voluptuous thoughts in minds of her children. After the Second World War, there was a new stage in the development of Tanizaki Jun’ichirō’s creative work.

Examining Visual Attention Patterns among Asexual and Heterosexual Individuals

ABSTRACT Asexuality has garnered much attention, and empirical data support its classification as a sexual orientation. Asexuality is defined as a lack of sexual attraction to others, with approximately 1% of the population falling in this category. As theoretical models situate attention as a central component of sexual response, the current study examined attentional processing of erotic stimuli in asexuals and heterosexuals. We hypothesized that heterosexual participants would have initial and controlled visual attention patterns favoring erotic images over non-erotic images. We predicted that asexual participants would have significantly smaller or non-existent differences in attention to erotic versus non-erotic images. Ninety-five adults completed an eye-tracking task viewing erotic and non-erotic images. Eye-tracking data showed no group differences in initial attention to erotic images. For controlled attention, there was a large effect size in the hypothesized direction. Heterosexual participants exhibited more and longer fixations on erotic images, whereas asexuals exhibited a more even distribution of attention across image types. Exploratory analysis of group differences in the association between visual attention and ratings of sexual attractiveness revealed a complex pattern of differences, with some indication of a stronger association between total fixation and sexual attraction for heterosexual participants. These findings suggest that differences in attention to sexual stimuli may represent key underlying differences between asexual and allosexual orientation. Findings also contribute to the larger literature on visual attention and attraction.

PUNJABI RAP MUSIC AND CULTURAL ETHICS: EXPOSURE OF INNUENDO AND IMPLICIT SEXUAL VISUALS IN SONGS

The popular images in current music visuals tell viewers stories about what is normal in terms of gender, race, and sexuality. Ethnic measurements of visuals in songs (rapping culture) are important to address for avoiding unnecessary penetration of sexual and erotic images in the content. This research is conducted to discover the visual ethics in Punjabi songs produced in time frame from 2015 to 2018. The content analysis is made of 3 songs of each 3 popular artists, i.e., Bohemia, Honey Singh, and Raftaar. Symbolic interactionism and knowledge gap hypothesis is tested on all 9 songs through content analysis. The results point out that in the current music visuals artists used sexual imagery more frequently and repeatedly in such way that attracted the mind of the listeners and viewers. The visuals are bold and sexually intense without any restrictions which leave bad impact on teenagers and adolescents. The research further identified the detail portion of frequent and familiar sexuality visuals in the music and its effects and impact on young generation. The limitation of this research is not focusing on detailed analysis of sexual objectification, misogyny, violence and gender stereotypical role produced by such content. The research suggests the parents, guardians and approach creators ought to think about the appropriateness and ramifications of teenagers' presentation of vulgarity in the media. Keywords: music, sexuality, innuendo, sexual suggestion, adolescents, behavior

Anxiety induction and sexual arousal in men and women

Anxiety can sometimes inhibit and sometimes potentiate sexual arousal. We examined whether an anxiety manipulation in a classical fear-conditioning paradigm impacts self-reported sexual arousal in men and women. University students (62 men, 61 women) underwent differential fear conditioning to erotic images; half the images were sometimes (60%) paired with a shock (CS+) and half were never paired with a shock (CS–). For each trial, participants rated their sexual arousal and anxiety in response to the image; skin conductance response (SCR) and zygomatic and corrugator activity were recorded. During acquisition, self-reported sexual arousal was lower to CS+ than CS− (inhibiting effect), but in men only. During extinction, self-reported sexual arousal was lower to CS+ than CS− for both genders. Some differences produced by CS+ and CS− were observed for SCR and zygomatic and corrugator activation at different points during acquisition and extinction, but the effects were unrelated to ratings of anxiety or sexual arousal. The negative impact of anxiety on sexual arousal appears to be resistant to extinction, and small gender differences were observed. Future studies should include direct measures of physiological sexual arousal. The relationship between sexual arousal and anxiety appears to be complex and should be further investigated.

Sexual Dysfunction in Chronically Medicated Male Inpatients With Schizophrenia: Prevalence, Risk Factors, Clinical Manifestations, and Response to Sexual Arousal.

BackgroundSexual dysfunction is a common symptom in patients with schizophrenia, especially in chronically medicated patients. However, the relationship between sexual dysfunction and emotional response to sexual arousal in male patients with schizophrenia remains unclear. This study aimed to assess the incidence, risk factors of sexual dysfunction in males, and their clinical correlations to sexual arousal in male patients with schizophrenia in China.MethodsA total of 162 male patients, aged 18–50 years, with schizophrenia were recruited from a psychiatric hospital in Ganzhou. The clinical symptoms were assessed by the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS). The Arizona Sexual Experience Scale was utilized to evaluate sexual dysfunction. Erotic images were selected from International Affective Picture System (IAPS). Sixty-eight out of the 162 subjects completed the erotic pictures reactivity task.ResultsOverall, 48 (29.6%) patients were measured as having global sexual dysfunction, 72 (44.4%) patients as having strength of sex drive dysfunction, 51 (31.5%) patients as having sexual arousal dysfunction, 55 (34.0%) patients as having penile erection dysfunction, 60 (37.0%) patients as having reached orgasm dysfunction, and 60 (37.0%) patients as having satisfaction with orgasm dysfunction. The sexual dysfunction patients had significantly higher scores on the negative symptoms of the PANSS. The only important predictor of sexual dysfunction was the severity of PANSS negative factor. The sense of pleasure and arousal post viewing erotic images in the sexual dysfunction group were lower compared to the non-sexual dysfunction group. The sense of pleasure and approach motivation were significantly negatively correlated with the severity of sexual dysfunction.ConclusionsThis study shows that nearly one-third of young and middle-aged chronically medicated male inpatients with schizophrenia suffer from sexual dysfunction. The negative factor of the PANSS can be regarded as the risk factor of sexual dysfunction. Schizophrenia patients with sexual dysfunction experienced lower pleasure and higher avoidance motivation than non-sexual dysfunction patients when exposed to erotic stimuli.

Child sexual abuse: increasing pandemic incidence

Introduction: The increase of violence against children is characterized as a serious public health problem. The media has continuously reported cases of: rape perpetrated against children, increased violence against this age group and alarming epidemiological data resulting from the isolation of the pandemic by SARS-CoV-2. Methods: Studies were identified using large-circulation international journals found in two electronic databases: Scopus and Embase. Results: Cases of harassment, rape, manipulation of the child's genitals, oral, anal or genital penetration, pedophilia, exploitation, dissemination of erotic images of children in social networks, exhibitionism, masturbation, Voyeurism and incestuous abuse are classified as child sexual abuse. The numbers of legal abortions in child and adolescent victims of rape tends to increase a 100% taking into account the in the first cases of 2020. Conclusion: discussions for the implementation of public policies and healthcare for children victims of sexual abuse are important for prevention, treatment, rehabilitation and reintegration into the society, considering all the sequel that this vulnerable group acquires after the crime.

Emotional reactivity to binge food and erotic cues in women with bulimia nervosa symptoms

BackgroundStudies on food cue reactivity have documented that altered responses to high-calorie food are associated with bulimic symptomatology, however, alterations in sexual motivations and behaviors are also associated clinical features in this population, which justify their inclusion as a research target. Here, we study responses to erotic cues—alongside food, neutral and aversive cues—to gain an understanding of specificity to food versus a generalized sensitivity to primary reinforcers.MethodsWe recorded peripheral psychophysiological indices –the startle reflex, zygomaticus, and corrugator responses—and self-reported emotional responses (valence, arousal, and dominance) in 75 women completing the Bulimia Test-Revised (BULIT-R). Multiple regression analysis tested whether BULIT-R symptoms were predicted by self-reported and psychophysiological responses to food versus neutral and erotic versus neutral images.ResultsThe results showed that individuals with higher bulimic symptoms were characterized by potentiated eye blink startle response during binge food (vs. neutral images) and more positive valence ratings during erotic (vs. neutral) cues.ConclusionsThe results highlight the negative emotional reactivity of individuals with elevated bulimic symptoms toward food cues, which could be related to the risk of progression to full bulimia nervosa and thereby addressed in prevention efforts. Results also point to the potential role of reactivity to erotic content, at least on a subjective level. Theoretical models of eating disorders should widen their conceptual scope to consider reactivity to a broader spectrum of primary reinforcers, which would have implications for cue exposure-based treatments.Plain English summaryWe examined appetitive and aversive cue responses in college women to investigate how bulimic symptoms relate to primary reinforcers such as food and erotic images. We recorded peripheral psychophysiological indices (the startle reflex, zygomaticus, and corrugator responses) and self-reported emotional responses (valence, arousal, and dominance) in 75 college women that were presented with the Spanish version of the Bulimia Test-Revised. The results showed that bulimic symptoms increase both psychophysiological defensiveness toward food cues and subjective pleasure toward erotic cues. The findings suggest a generalized sensitivity to primary reinforcers in the presence of bulimic symptoms, and emphasize the relevance of adopting a wider framework in research and treatment on bulimia nervosa.

Food addiction symptoms are related to neuroaffective responses to preferred binge food and erotic cues

It has been proposed that some individuals succumb to maladaptive eating behaviors because, like those with addiction, they attribute high incentive salience to food-associated cues. Here, we tested whether women that attribute high incentive salience to food-associated cues report high food addiction symptomatology. In 76 college women, we assessed self-reported food addiction symptoms using the Yale Food Addiction Scale and we recorded event-related potentials (ERPs, a direct measure of brain activity) to preferred food, erotic, unpleasant, and neutral images. We used the amplitude of the late positive potential (LPP, a component of the ERPs) as an index of the incentive salience attributed to the images. Using a multivariate classification algorithm (k-means cluster analysis), we identified two neuroaffective reactivity profiles that have been previously associated with individual differences in the tendency to attribute incentive salience to cues and with differences in vulnerability to addictive behaviors. Results showed that women with elevated LPP responses to preferred food cues relative to erotic images report higher food addiction symptoms than women with low LPP responses to preferred food cues relative to other motivationally relevant stimuli. These results support the hypothesis that individual differences in the tendency to attribute incentive salience to food cues play an important role in modulating food addiction symptomatology.

Attention Bias and Recognition of Sexual Images in Depression.

Depression greatly affects sexuality. Theoretical and empirical evidence account for the existence of attention bias to sex-related stimuli. This attention bias might be impaired in depression, resulting in sexual problems. A sample of 13 patients with depression and 13 matched healthy controls were tested using the dot-probe and picture recognition task to measure attention to erotic images. No difference in attention to sex-related stimuli (ω2 = 0, p = 0.22) and in memory bias (ω2 = 0, p = 0.72) was found between the two groups. Explorative analyses were conducted to identify the sexual content-induced delay effect in the data, assess variability differences, and compare trial-level bias score-based indexes between groups. Across all analyses, there was little evidence for depression affecting sexual-related cognitive processing, and even this might be explained by other means. Our results suggest that restrained attention is probably not the main factor behind sexual problems in depression.

Brain activation in response to visual sexual stimuli in male patients with right middle cerebral artery infarction: The first case-control functional magnetic resonance imaging study.

Sexual dysfunction is a common problem after cerebral infarction; however, little is known about sexual arousal in poststroke patients. Thus, this study aimed to investigate brain activation in response to visual sexual stimuli in patients with right middle cerebral artery (MCA) territory infarction using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Using fMRI in 20 participants (11 right MCA infarction patients and 9 age-matched healthy controls), we assessed brain activation elicited by visual sexual stimuli (erotic images) and visual nonsexual stimuli (landscape images). In right MCA infarction patients, the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the left frontal subgyral area were more strongly activated by visual sexual stimuli than by nonvisual sexual stimuli. Brain areas that were more activated by visual sexual stimuli in right MCA infarction patients than in controls included the right parahippocampal gyrus and the bilateral frontal subgyral area. These fMRI results suggest that brain activation patterns in response to visual sexual stimuli might be influenced by right MCA infarction. Further research is needed to explore the association between sexual dysfunction and brain activation in poststroke patients.