Extinction and Renewal of Conditioned Sexual Responses

Overview

Journal PLoS One

Specialties General Medicine
Science

Date 2014 Aug 30

PMID 25170909

Citations 3

Authors

Mirte Brom

Ellen Laan

Walter Everaerd

Philip Spinhoven

Stephanie Both

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Introduction: Extinction involves an inhibitory form of new learning that is highly dependent on the context for expression. This is supported by phenomena such as renewal and spontaneous recovery, which may help explain the persistence of appetitive behavior, and related problems such as addictions. Research on these phenomena in the sexual domain is lacking, where it may help to explain the persistence of learned sexual responses.

Method: Men (n = 40) and women (n = 62) participated in a differential conditioning paradigm, with genital vibrotactile stimulation as US and neutral pictures as conditional stimuli (CSs). Dependent variables were genital and subjective sexual arousal, affect, US expectancy, and approach and avoid tendencies towards the CSs. Extinction and renewal of conditioned sexual responses were studied by context manipulation (AAA vs. ABA condition).

Results: No renewal effect of genital conditioned responding could be detected, but an obvious recovery of US expectancy following a context change after extinction (ABA) was demonstrated. Additionally, women demonstrated recovery of subjective affect and subjective sexual arousal. Participants in the ABA demonstrated more approach biases towards stimuli.

Conclusions: The findings support the context dependency of extinction and renewal of conditioned sexual responses in humans. This knowledge may have implications for the treatment of disturbances in sexual appetitive responses such as hypo- and hypersexuality.

Citing Articles

Conditioning of Sexual Interests and Paraphilias in Humans Is Difficult to See, Virtually Impossible to Test, and Probably Exactly How It Happens: A Comment on Hsu and Bailey (2020).

Pfaus J, Quintana G, Mac Cionnaith C, Gerson C, Dube S, Coria-Avila G Arch Sex Behav. 2020; 49(5):1403-1407.

PMID: 32462414 DOI: 10.1007/s10508-020-01739-2.

A randomized, placebo-controlled laboratory study of the effects of D-cycloserine on sexual memory consolidation in women.

Both S, Van Veen R, Brom M, Weijenborg P Psychopharmacology (Berl). 2020; 237(5):1291-1303.

PMID: 31984445 PMC: 7196949. DOI: 10.1007/s00213-020-05457-4.

The effect of a dopamine antagonist on conditioning of sexual arousal in women.

Brom M, Laan E, Everaerd W, Spinhoven P, Trimbos B, Both S Psychopharmacology (Berl). 2016; 233(7):1179-89.

PMID: 26832339 PMC: 4801988. DOI: 10.1007/s00213-015-4201-x.

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