Trait sexual motivation questionnaire: concept and validation.

Introduction: Trait sexual motivation defines a psychological construct that reflects the long-lasting degree of motivation for sexual activities, which is assumed to be the result of biological and sociocultural influences. With this definition, it shares commonalities with other sexuality-related constructs like sexual desire, sexual drive, sexual needs, and sexual compulsivity.

Aim: The Trait Sexual Motivation Questionnaire (TSMQ) was developed in order to measure trait sexual motivation with its different facets.

Sex attracts: investigating individual differences in attentional bias to sexual stimuli.

We investigated the impact of sexual stimuli and the influence of sexual motivation on the performance in a dot-probe task and a line-orientation task in a large sample of males and females. All pictures (neutral, erotic) were rated on the dimensions of valence, arousal, disgust, and sexual arousal. Additionally, questionnaires measuring sexual interest/desire/motivation were employed.

At the second glance: stability of neural responses toward visual sexual stimuli.

Introduction: Studies investigating the neural responses toward sexual stimuli can provide an important basis for further understanding disorders of sexual functioning. Although our knowledge of the neural correlates of sexual stimulus processing has increased considerably in the last decade, the stability of the observed effects in studies on neural sexual responses has been rather neglected.

Aims: The current study aimed to test the stability of behavioral and neural responses to visual sexual stimuli in men and women over a time span of 1 to 1.

Learning to like disgust: neuronal correlates of counterconditioning.

Converging lines of research suggest that exaggerated disgust responses play a crucial role in the development and maintenance of certain anxiety disorders. One strategy that might effectively alter disgust responses is counterconditioning. In this study, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine if the neuronal bases of disgust responses are altered through a counterconditioning procedure.

Gender commonalities and differences in the neural processing of visual sexual stimuli.

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.

Neural responses to smoking stimuli are influenced by smokers' attitudes towards their own smoking behaviour.

An important feature of addiction is the high drug craving that may promote the continuation of consumption. Environmental stimuli classically conditioned to drug-intake have a strong motivational power for addicts and can elicit craving. However, addicts differ in the attitudes towards their own consumption behavior: some are content with drug taking (consonant users) whereas others are discontent (dissonant users).

Individual differences in neural correlates of fear conditioning as a function of 5-HTTLPR and stressful life events.

Fear learning is a crucial process in the pathogeneses of psychiatric disorders, which highlights the need to identify specific factors contributing to interindividual variation. We hypothesized variation in the serotonin transporter gene (5-HTTLPR) and stressful life events (SLEs) to be associated with neural correlates of fear conditioning in a sample of healthy male adults (n = 47). Subjects were exposed to a differential fear conditioning paradigm after being preselected regarding 5-HTTLPR genotype and SLEs.

Neural activation toward erotic stimuli in homosexual and heterosexual males.

Introduction: Studies investigating sexual arousal exist, yet there are diverging findings on the underlying neural mechanisms with regard to sexual orientation. Moreover, sexual arousal effects have often been confounded with general arousal effects. Hence, it is still unclear which structures underlie the sexual arousal response in homosexual and heterosexual men.

Can you hear a difference? Neuronal correlates of melodic deviance processing in children.

Many studies investigating music processing in adult musicians and nonmusicians point towards pronounced behavioral and neurophysiological differences between the two groups. Recent studies indicate that these differences can already be found in early childhood. Further, electro-encephalography studies using musical discrimination tasks have demonstrated that differences in music processing become more pronounced when explicitly rather than implicitly trained musical abilities are required.

The impact of coping style on gaze duration.

The understanding of individual differences in response to threat (e.g., attentional bias) is important to better understand the development of anxiety disorders.

Neural activations of the acquisition of conditioned sexual arousal: effects of contingency awareness and sex.

Introduction: Learning processes like classical conditioning are involved in mediating sexual behavior. Yet, the neural bases underlying these processes have not been investigated so far.

Aim: The aim of this study was to explore neural activations of classical conditioning of sexual arousal with respect to sex differences and contingency awareness.

Contingency learning in human fear conditioning involves the ventral striatum.

The ability to detect and learn contingencies between fearful stimuli and their predictive cues is an important capacity to cope with the environment. Contingency awareness refers to the ability to verbalize the relationships between conditioned and unconditioned stimuli. Although there is a heated debate about the influence of contingency awareness on conditioned fear responses, neural correlates behind the formation process of contingency awareness have gained only little attention in human fear conditioning.

Cognitive functioning during methadone and buprenorphine treatment: results of a randomized clinical trial.

Cognitive impairment in drug-dependent patients receiving methadone (MMP) maintenance treatment has been reported previously. We assessed cognitive functioning after at least 14 days of stable substitution treatment with buprenorphine (BUP) or MMP and after 8 to 10 weeks. We performed a randomized, nonblinded clinical trial in 59 drug-dependent patients receiving either BUP or MMP maintenance treatment and healthy normal controls (n = 24) matched for sex, age, and educational level.

Effects of inpatient psychotherapy on the stability of alexithymia characteristics.

Background: Although alexithymia is associated with several psychiatric disorders, there has been little research into the effects of psychodynamic psychotherapies on this condition. Here, the influence of inpatient multimodal psychodynamic psychotherapy on alexithymia and symptom load was evaluated in a large sample of patients.

Methods: Alexithymia [measured with the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS)-26] and psychological stress and depression [measured with the Symptom Checklist 90 Revised (SCL-90-R)] were evaluated at admission and after inpatient multimodal psychotherapy in patients with various psychosomatic and psychiatric disorders admitted to this unit between 2002 and 2005.

Hemodynamic brain correlates of disgust and fear ratings.

Inconsistent findings from several functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies on fear and disgust raise the question which brain regions are relatively specialized and which are general in the processing of these basic emotions. Some of these inconsistencies could partially be due to inter-individual differences in the experience of the applied emotional stimuli. In the present study, we therefore correlated the participants' individual online reports of fear and disgust with their hemodynamic responses towards each of the fear- and disgust-inducing scenes.

Influence of the stress hormone cortisol on fear conditioning in humans: evidence for sex differences in the response of the prefrontal cortex.

The stress hormone cortisol is known to influence declarative memory and associative learning. In animals, stress has often been reported to have opposing effects on memory and learning in males and females. In humans, the effects of cortisol have mainly been studied at the behavioral level.

Less impairment on one portion of a driving-relevant psychomotor battery in buprenorphine-maintained than in methadone-maintained patients: results of a randomized clinical trial.

Background: Cognitive impairment in drug-dependent patients under methadone maintenance treatment has been reported before. We assessed whether patients under buprenorphine, a partial mu-opioid agonist, perform better in cognitive tests measuring psychomotor performance as described in previous nonrandomized studies.

Methods: We performed a randomized clinical trial in 62 drug-dependent patients under either buprenorphine or methadone treatment.

Driving ability in schizophrenic patients: effects of neuroleptics.

Recent studies indicate that individuals with schizophrenia have a two-fold incidence of traffic accidents. Cognitive and psychomotor impairment as a core feature of schizophrenia and the effects of neuroleptic treatment play an essential role in this respect. Few experimental studies have been conducted so far looking at the effects of neuroleptics on driving ability in schizophrenia.

Effects of haloperidol and risperidone on psychomotor performance relevant to driving ability in schizophrenic patients compared to healthy controls.

The effects of antipsychotic treatment on the psychomotor performance and driving ability of schizophrenic patients is subject of investigation. The present study was designed to evaluate the effects of an atypical neuroleptic (risperidone) in comparison to a conventional dopamine antagonist neuroleptic (haloperidol) on several dimensions of psychomotor performance (visual perception, attention, reaction time, and sensorimotor performance) considered to be of relevance in evaluating driving fitness. Psychomotor performance was assessed by means of the ART 90 (act-and-react test), a computerized test battery which is frequently used in diagnosis of psychomotor performance.

Effects of haloperidol and atypical neuroleptics on psychomotor performance and driving ability in schizophrenic patients. Results from an experimental study.

The influence of antipsychotic treatment on the neuropsychological and psychomotor performance of schizophrenic patients is still a subject of investigation. The present study was designed to evaluate the effects of atypical neuroleptics in comparison with a conventional dopamine antagonist neuroleptic (haloperidol) on several dimensions of psychomotor performance (visual perception, attention, reaction time, and sensorimotor performance) considered to be of relevance in evaluating driving fitness. Psychomotor performance was assessed by means of the ART 90, a computerized Act and React Test which is generally used in diagnosis of psychomotor performance.