Agreement of Self-Reported and Genital Measures of Sexual Arousal in Men and Women: A Meta-Analysis

The assessment of sexual arousal in men and women informs theoretical studies of human sexuality and provides a method to assess and evaluate the treatment of sexual dysfunctions and paraphilias. Understanding measures of arousal is, therefore, paramount to further theoretical and practical advances in the study of human sexuality. In this meta-analysis, we review research to quantify the extent of agreement between self-reported and genital measures of sexual arousal, to determine if there is a gender difference in this agreement, and to identify theoretical and methodological moderators of subjective-genital agreement. We identified 132 peer- or academically-reviewed laboratory studies published between 1969 and 2007 reporting a correlation between self-reported and genital measures of sexual arousal, with total sample sizes of 2,505 women and 1,918 men. There was a statistically significant gender difference in the agreement between self-reported and genital measures, with men (r = .66) showing a greater degree of agreement than women (r = .26). Two methodological moderators of the gender difference in subjective-genital agreement were identified: stimulus variability and timing of the assessment of self-reported sexual arousal. The results have implications for assessment of sexual arousal, the nature of gender differences in sexual arousal, and models of sexual response

Effects of food on cortisol and mood in vulnerable subjects under controllable and uncontrollable stress

The aim of this study was to investigate whether in stress-prone subjects, carbohydrate-rich, protein-poor food (cr/pp) diminished depressive mood and a cortisol response under controllable as well as uncontrollable laboratory stress. Twenty-two subjects with high stress proneness (hs) and 23 subjects with low stress proneness (ls) participated in a controllable- and uncontrollable-stress experiment during either a cr/pp or protein-rich, carbohydrate-poor (pr/cp) diet. Both controllable and uncontrollable laboratory stress significantly increased pulse rate and skin conductance in hs and ls subjects, whereas uncontrollable stress increased feelings of depression, anger, tension, and fatigue and decreased feelings of vigor. Only in hs subjects, a cortisol response and feelings of depression became lower under the cr/pp diet condition, irrespective of the controllability of the laboratory stressor, suggesting an increased ability to cope with stress. Because the cr/pp diet compared with the pr/cp diet previously has been found to cause a 42% increase in plasma tryptophan/slnaa, seen as an indirect measure of increases in brain serotonin levels, the present results suggest that an enhanced serotonin function in hs subjects may be involved

Effects of testosterone administration on selective aspects of object-location memory in healthy young women

Previous work has indicated that object-location memory is sensitive to sex differences as well as variations in the menstrual cycle. The goal of the present study was to further examine the hormonal basis of human spatial memory by assessing the effects of a single dose of exogenous testosterone in healthy young women on three recall conditions: positional reconstruction; object-to-position-assignment; and the combined condition in which subjects both have to reconstruct the precise locations and to link the different objects to the correct places. In the latter condition, delayed recall (3 min delay) improved with testosterone. Although the effects were only small and need further substantiation, they support the idea that testosterone may have an activational effect on selective aspects of cognitive functioning. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved

Cortisol inversely related to prefrontal gamma coherence in healthy human subjects

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