Francesco Bianchi-Demicheli

The Neural Basis of Love as a Subliminal Prime: An Event-related Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study

Throughout the ages, love has been defined as a motivated and goal-directed mechanism with explicit and implicit mechanisms. Recent evidence demonstrated that the explicit representation of love recruits subcorticocortical pathways mediating reward, emotion, and motivation systems. However, the neural basis of the implicit (unconscious) representation of love remains unknown. To assess this question, we combined event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) with a behavioral subliminal priming paradigm embedded in a lexical decision task. In this task, the name of either a beloved partner, a neutral friend, or a passionate hobby was subliminally presented before a target stimulus (word, nonword, or blank), and participants were required to decide if the target was a word or not. Behavioral results showed that subliminal presentation of either a beloveds name (love prime) or a passion descriptor (passion prime) enhanced reaction times in a similar fashion. Subliminal presentation of a friends name (friend prime) did not show any beneficial effects. Functional results showed that subliminal priming with a beloveds name (as opposed to either a friends name or a passion descriptor) specifically recruited brain areas involved in abstract representations of others and the self, in addition to motivation circuits shared with other sources of passion. More precisely, love primes recruited the fusiform and angular gyri. Our findings suggest that love, as a subliminal prime, involves a specific neural network that surpasses a dopaminergic-motivation system.

Neuroimaging of Love: fMRI Meta‐Analysis Evidence toward New Perspectives in Sexual Medicine

INTRODUCTION Brain imaging is becoming a powerful tool in the study of human cerebral functions related to close personal relationships. Outside of subcortical structures traditionally thought to be involved in reward-related systems, a wide range of neuroimaging studies in relationship science indicate a prominent role for different cortical networks and cognitive factors. Thus, the field needs a better anatomical/network/whole-brain model to help translate scientific knowledge from lab bench to clinical models and ultimately to the patients suffering from disorders associated with love and couple relationships. AIM The aim of the present review is to provide a review across wide range of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies to critically identify the cortical networks associated with passionate love, and to compare and contrast it with other types of love (such as maternal love and unconditional love for persons with intellectual disabilities). METHODS Retrospective review of pertinent neuroimaging literature. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Review of published literature on fMRI studies of love illustrating brain regions associated with different forms of love. RESULTS Although all fMRI studies of love point to the subcortical dopaminergic reward-related brain systems (involving dopamine and oxytocin receptors) for motivating individuals in pair-bonding, the present meta-analysis newly demonstrated that different types of love involve distinct cerebral networks, including those for higher cognitive functions such as social cognition and bodily self-representation. CONCLUSIONS These metaresults provide the first stages of a global neuroanatomical model of cortical networks involved in emotions related to different aspects of love. Developing this model in future studies should be helpful for advancing clinical approaches helpful in sexual medicine and couple therapy.

The Common Neural Bases Between Sexual Desire and Love: A Multilevel Kernel Density fMRI Analysis

INTRODUCTION One of the most difficult dilemmas in relationship science and couple therapy concerns the interaction between sexual desire and love. As two mental states of intense longing for union with others, sexual desire and love are, in fact, often difficult to disentangle from one another. AIM The present review aims to help understand the differences and similarities between these two mental states using a comprehensive statistical meta-analyses of all functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies on sexual desire and love. METHODS Systematic retrospective review of pertinent neuroimaging literature. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Review of published literature on fMRI studies illustrating brain regions associated with love and sexual desire to date. RESULTS Sexual desire and love not only show differences but also recruit a striking common set of brain areas that mediate somatosensory integration, reward expectation, and social cognition. More precisely, a significant posterior-to-anterior insular pattern appears to track sexual desire and love progressively. CONCLUSIONS This specific pattern of activation suggests that love builds upon a neural circuit for emotions and pleasure, adding regions associated with reward expectancy, habit formation, and feature detection. In particular, the shared activation within the insula, with a posterior-to-anterior pattern, from desire to love, suggests that love grows out of and is a more abstract representation of the pleasant sensorimotor experiences that characterize desire. From these results, one may consider desire and love on a spectrum that evolves from integrative representations of affective visceral sensations to an ultimate representation of feelings incorporating mechanisms of reward expectancy and habit learning.

Correlation between insula activation and self-reported quality of orgasm in women.

Current multidimensional models of womens sexual function acknowledge the implicit impact of psychosocial factors on womens sexual function. Interaction between human sexual function and intensity of love has been also assumed, even if love is not an absolute condition. Yet, whereas great insights have been made in understanding the central mechanisms of the peripheral manifestations of womens sexual response, including orgasm, the cerebral correlates sustaining the interaction between womens sexual satisfaction and the unconscious role of the partner in this interpersonal experience remain unknown. Using functional imaging, we assessed brain activity elicited when 29 healthy female volunteers were unconsciously exposed to the subliminal presentation of their significant partners name (a task known to elicit a partner-related neural network) and correlated it with individual scores obtained from different sexual dimensions: self-reported partnered orgasm quality (ease, satisfaction, frequency), love intensity and emotional closeness with that partner. Behavioral results identified a correlation between love and self-reported partnered orgasm quality. The more women were in love/emotionally close to their partner, the more they tended to report being satisfied with the quality of their partnered orgasm. However, no relationship was found between intensity of love and partnered orgasm frequency. Neuroimaging data expanded these behavioral results by demonstrating the involvement of a specific left-lateralized insula focus of neural activity correlating with orgasm scores, irrespective of dimension (frequency, ease, satisfaction). In contrast, intensity of being in love was correlated with a network involving the angular gyrus. These findings strongly suggest that intimate and sexual relationships are sustained by partly different mechanisms, even if they share some emotional-related mechanisms. The critical correlation between self-reports of orgasm quality and activation of the left anterior insula, a part of the partner-related neural network known to play a pivotal role in somatic processes, suggests the importance of somatic information in the integration of sexual experience. On the other hand, the correlation between activation of the angular gyrus and love intensity reinforces the assumption that the representation of love calls for higher order cognitive levels, such as those related to the generation of abstract concepts. By highlighting the specific role of the anterior insula in the way women integrate components of physical satisfaction in the context of an intimate relationship with a partner, the current findings take a step in the understanding of a womans sexual pleasure.

Neural bases of hypoactive sexual desire disorder in women: an event-related fMRI study

INTRODUCTION Although there is an abundant debate regarding the mechanisms sustaining one of the most common sexual complaints among women, i.e., female hypoactive sexual desire disorder (HSDD), little remains known about the specific neural bases of this disorder. AIM The main goal of this study was to determine whether women with HSDD showed differential patterns of activation within the brain network that is active for sexual desire in subjects without HSDD. METHODS A total of 28 right-handed women participated in this study (mean age 31.1±7.02 years). Thirteen out of the 28 women had HSDD (HSDD participants), while 15 women reported no hypoactive sexual desire disorder (NHSDD participants). Using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we compared the regional cerebral blood flow responses between these two groups of participants, while they were looking at erotic vs. non-erotic stimuli. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE Blood-oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) signal changes in response to erotic stimuli (compared with non-erotic stimuli). Statistical Parametric Mapping was used to identify brain regions that demonstrated significant differential activations between stimuli and between groups. RESULTS As expected, behavioral results showed that NHSDD participants rated erotic stimuli significantly higher than HSDD participants did on a 10-point desirable scale. No rating difference was observed for the non-erotic stimuli between NHSDD and HSDD participants. Our functional neuroimaging results extended these data by demonstrating two distinct types of neural changes in participants with and without HSDD. In comparison with HSDD participants, participants without HSDD demonstrated more activation in brain areas involved in the processing of erotic stimuli, including intraparietal sulcus, dorsal anterior cingulate gyrus, and ento/perirhinal region. Interestingly, HSDD participants also showed additional activations in brain areas associated with higher order social and cognitive functions, such as inferior parietal lobule, inferior frontal gyrus, and posterior medial occipital gyrus. CONCLUSION Together, these findings indicate that HSDD participants do not only show a hypo activation in brain areas mediating sexual desire, but also a different brain network of hyper activation, which might reflect differences in subjective, social, and cognitive interpretations of erotic stimuli. Collectively, these data are in line with the incentive motivation model of sexual functioning.

The power of love on the human brain

Abstract Romantic love has been the source for some of the greatest achievements of mankind throughout the ages. The recent localization of romantic love within subcortico–cortical reward, motivation and emotion systems in the human brain has suggested that love is a goal-directed drive with predictable facilitation effects on cognitive behavior, rather than a pure emotion. Here we show that the subliminal exposure of a beloveds name (romantic prime) during a lexical decision task dramatically improves performance in women in love (Experiment 1), as the subliminal presentation of a passions descriptive noun does (Experiment 2). The parallel between love and passion allows us to interpret these facilitation effects as corresponding to cognitive top-down processes within a motivation-enhanced neural network.

Termination of Pregnancy and Women’s Sexuality

Objective: To determine the influence of termination of pregnancy (TOP) on women’s sexuality. Design: Prospective qualitative and quantitative study. Subjects: 103 women undergoing induced abortion by vacuum aspiration, interviewed 1–3 weeks before surgery and 6 months later. Results: After TOP, patients described symptoms of fatigue (39%), feelings of guilt (35%), sadness (34%) and anxiety (29%). Thirty-one percent of women presented at least one sexual dysfunction, 18% a decrease in sexual desire, 17% orgasmic disorders, 12% vaginal dryness and 11% dyspareunia. These sexual dysfunctions were correlated with anxiety and symptoms of depression following TOP. Six months after TOP, 57% of the women reported no change in their sexual satisfaction, 17% were ‘more satisfied’ and 7% ‘less satisfied’. Lessening of sexual satisfaction after TOP was correlated with diminished partner satisfaction (p < 0.00001), fatigue (p < 0.0009), feelings of guilt (p < 0.01), low frequency of sexual relations (p < 0.01) and anxiety over sexual relations (p < 0.02). Conclusions: Six months after TOP some women presented persisting sexual dysfunction. This sexual dysfunction may be explained essentially by the appearance of symptoms of anxiety and depression following TOP. When the quality of the relationship was satisfying, women could cope more easily with the appearance of a sexual dysfunction.

Neurobiology of DHEA and effects on sexuality, mood and cognition

Dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) and its sulfate ester, DHEAS, are the most abundant steroid hormones in the humans. However, their physiological significance, their mechanisms of action and their possible roles as treatment are not fully clarified. Biological actions of DHEA(S) in the brain involve neuroprotection, neurite growth, neurogenesis and neuronal survival, apoptosis, catecholamine synthesis and secretion, as well as anti-oxidant, anti-inflammatory and antiglucocorticoid effects. In addition, DHEA affects neurosteroidogenis and endorphin synthesis/release. We also demonstrated in a model of ovariectomized rats that DHEA therapy increases proceptive behaviors, already after 1 week of treatment, affecting central function of sexual drive. In women, the analyses of clinical outcomes are far from being conclusive and many issues should still be addressed. Although DHEA preparations have been available in the market since the 1990s, there are very few definitive reports on the biological functions of this steroid. We demonstrate that 1 year DHEA administration at the dose of 10mg provided a significant improvement in comparison with vitamin D in sexual function and in frequency of sexual intercourse in early postmenopausal women. Among symptomatic women, the spectrum of symptoms responding to DHEA requires further investigation, to define the type of sexual symptoms (e.g. decreased sexual function or hypoactive sexual desire disorder) and the degree of mood/cognitive symptoms that could be responsive to hormonal treatment. In this regard, our findings are promising, although they need further exploration with a larger and more representative sample size. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled: Essential role of DHEA.

The chronoarchitecture of human sexual desire: A high-density electrical mapping study

Recent neuroimaging research suggests that human sexual desire (SD) recruits both the limbic system and higher-order cognitive brain areas. Because of the temporal limitation of this technique, the chronoarchitecture of SD remains however unresolved. Here, we investigated the spatio-temporal dynamics of SD by combining a behavioral desire decision task with high-density visual event-related potential (VEP) recordings and brain source estimations. VEPs were recorded from thirteen healthy participants when presented with pictures from two different stimulus categories (i.e., high and low desirability). In agreement with the literature, behavioral results showed that participants were faster to rate non-desired stimuli than desired stimuli (p=0.028). Electrophysiological results extended these behavioral data. Group-averaged VEPs peaked at 90 to 140 ms (P100), at 142 to 220 ms (N200), and at 222 to 360 ms (P300). Desired stimuli (DS) were distinguished from non-desired stimuli (NDS) over the N200 period, notably from 142 to 187 ms. Over this time period, DS processing was characterized by a significant scalp potential field. Although both conditions (DS and NDS) showed the recruitment of the occipito-temporal region (including the extrastriate body area, EBA), LAURA source estimation of the DS scalp potential field revealed a more right-lateralized current source density maximum in the posterior superior temporal sulcus (STS) extending to the temporo-parietal junction (TPJ). The recruitment of STS and TPJ for desired stimuli indicates that these brain areas, known to be respectively involved in social cognition, attention, integration of body-related information and self-processing, play a crucial role for the coding of desirability of visual sexual human stimuli within the first 200 ms after stimulus onset. These findings support the hypothesis that complex cognitive processing for desire occurs much faster than previously thought and open new perspectives with respect to the role of both bottom-up and top-down mechanisms in visual processing of sexual stimuli.

Induced abortion and psychosexuality.

Little information exists on the impact of induced abortion on psychosexuality. Negative psychological effects and psychiatric complications due to termination of pregnancy seem to be rare. The objective of this study was to review the impact of induced abortion on sexuality and couple relationships. A systematic search of the literature was performed. Studies had to report a quantitative or qualitative evaluation of sexuality after pregnancy termination. Four studies were included. In the one prospective study using a control group, no difference in sexual functioning between groups after 1 year was reported. In the remaining observational studies, sexual dysfunction was reported in up to 30% of women after termination. Women undergoing abortion had significantly more conflicts in their partnerships. This was similar in all studies. Separation occurred in about one-quarter of all couples. Some studies report sexual dysfunction after termination of pregnancy. In about half of the couples separated after termination, abortion seemed not to have led to the separation. Psychological factors, together with relationship problems, might have played a role in failed contraception. The impact of induced abortion on sexuality needs to be studied in greater detail with rigorous methodology to draw firm conclusions.