title: The influence of emotion down-regulation on the expectation of sexual reward.
abstract: Emotion regulation research has shown successful altering of unwanted aversive emotional reactions. Cognitive strategies can also regulate expectations of reward arising from conditioned stimuli. However, less is known about the efficacy of such strategies with expectations elicited by conditioned appetitive sexual stimuli, and possible sex differences therein. In the present study it was examined whether a cognitive strategy (attentional deployment) could successfully down-regulate sexual arousal elicited by sexual reward-conditioned cues in men and women. A differential conditioning paradigm was applied, with genital vibrostimulation as unconditioned stimulus (US) and sexually relevant pictures as conditional stimuli (CSs). Evidence was found for emotion down-regulation to effect extinction of conditioned sexual responding in men. In women, the emotion down-regulatory strategy resulted in attenuated conditioned approach tendencies towards the CSs. The findings support that top-down modulation may indeed influence conditioned sexual responses. This knowledge may have implications for treating disturbances in sexual appetitive responses.
authors.affiliation: Leiden University and Leiden University Medical Centre. Electronic address: m.brom@lumc.nl.
authors.forename: Mirte
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Brom
authors.affiliation: University of Amsterdam.
authors.forename: Ellen
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Laan
authors.affiliation: University of Amsterdam.
authors.forename: Walter
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Everaerd
authors.affiliation: Leiden University and Leiden University Medical Centre.
authors.forename: Philip
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Spinhoven
authors.affiliation: Utrecht University.
authors.forename: Janna
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Cousijn
authors.affiliation: Leiden University Medical Centre.
authors.forename: Stephanie
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Both
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology; D003214:Conditioning, Classical / Q000502:physiology*; D003463:Cues; D015536:Down-Regulation; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007989:Libido / Q000502:physiology; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D012201:Reward; D012725:Sexual Behavior / Q000523:psychology*; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: emotion regulation; sexual arousal; sexual conditioning; sexual response; sexual reward learning