Novelty, conditioning and attentional bias to sexual rewards

The Internet provides a large source of novel and rewarding stimuli, particularly with respect to sexually explicit materials. Novelty-seeking and cue-conditioning are fundamental processes underlying preference and approach behaviors implicated in disorders of addiction. Here we examine these proce...

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Main Authors:	Banca, Paula, Morris, Laurel S., Mitchell, Simon, Harrison, Neil A., Potenza, Marc N., Voon, Valerie
Format:	Online
Language:	English
Published:	Pergamon Press 2016
Online Access:	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4683093/

id	pubmed-4683093
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	pubmed-46830932016-01-11 Novelty, conditioning and attentional bias to sexual rewards Banca, Paula Morris, Laurel S. Mitchell, Simon Harrison, Neil A. Potenza, Marc N. Voon, Valerie Article The Internet provides a large source of novel and rewarding stimuli, particularly with respect to sexually explicit materials. Novelty-seeking and cue-conditioning are fundamental processes underlying preference and approach behaviors implicated in disorders of addiction. Here we examine these processes in individuals with compulsive sexual behaviors (CSB), hypothesizing a greater preference for sexual novelty and stimuli conditioned to sexual rewards relative to healthy volunteers. Twenty-two CSB males and forty age-matched male volunteers were tested in two separate behavioral tasks focusing on preferences for novelty and conditioned stimuli. Twenty subjects from each group were also assessed in a third conditioning and extinction task using functional magnetic resonance imaging. CSB was associated with enhanced novelty preference for sexual, as compared to control images, and a generalized preference for cues conditioned to sexual and monetary versus neutral outcomes compared to healthy volunteers. CSB individuals also had greater dorsal cingulate habituation to repeated sexual versus monetary images with the degree of habituation correlating with enhanced preference for sexual novelty. Approach behaviors to sexually conditioned cues dissociable from novelty preference were associated with an early attentional bias to sexual images. This study shows that CSB individuals have a dysfunctional enhanced preference for sexual novelty possibly mediated by greater cingulate habituation along with a generalized enhancement of conditioning to rewards. We further emphasize a dissociable role for cue-conditioning and novelty preference on the early attentional bias for sexual cues. These findings have wider relevance as the Internet provides a broad range of novel and potentially rewarding stimuli. Pergamon Press 2016-01 /pmc/articles/PMC4683093/ /pubmed/26606725 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jpsychires.2015.10.017 Text en © 2015 The Authors http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
repository_type	Open Access Journal
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	US National Center for Biotechnology Information
building	NCBI PubMed
collection	Online Access
language	English
format	Online
author	Banca, Paula Morris, Laurel S. Mitchell, Simon Harrison, Neil A. Potenza, Marc N. Voon, Valerie
spellingShingle	Banca, Paula Morris, Laurel S. Mitchell, Simon Harrison, Neil A. Potenza, Marc N. Voon, Valerie Novelty, conditioning and attentional bias to sexual rewards
author_facet	Banca, Paula Morris, Laurel S. Mitchell, Simon Harrison, Neil A. Potenza, Marc N. Voon, Valerie
author_sort	Banca, Paula
title	Novelty, conditioning and attentional bias to sexual rewards
title_short	Novelty, conditioning and attentional bias to sexual rewards
title_full	Novelty, conditioning and attentional bias to sexual rewards
title_fullStr	Novelty, conditioning and attentional bias to sexual rewards
title_full_unstemmed	Novelty, conditioning and attentional bias to sexual rewards
title_sort	novelty, conditioning and attentional bias to sexual rewards
description	The Internet provides a large source of novel and rewarding stimuli, particularly with respect to sexually explicit materials. Novelty-seeking and cue-conditioning are fundamental processes underlying preference and approach behaviors implicated in disorders of addiction. Here we examine these processes in individuals with compulsive sexual behaviors (CSB), hypothesizing a greater preference for sexual novelty and stimuli conditioned to sexual rewards relative to healthy volunteers. Twenty-two CSB males and forty age-matched male volunteers were tested in two separate behavioral tasks focusing on preferences for novelty and conditioned stimuli. Twenty subjects from each group were also assessed in a third conditioning and extinction task using functional magnetic resonance imaging. CSB was associated with enhanced novelty preference for sexual, as compared to control images, and a generalized preference for cues conditioned to sexual and monetary versus neutral outcomes compared to healthy volunteers. CSB individuals also had greater dorsal cingulate habituation to repeated sexual versus monetary images with the degree of habituation correlating with enhanced preference for sexual novelty. Approach behaviors to sexually conditioned cues dissociable from novelty preference were associated with an early attentional bias to sexual images. This study shows that CSB individuals have a dysfunctional enhanced preference for sexual novelty possibly mediated by greater cingulate habituation along with a generalized enhancement of conditioning to rewards. We further emphasize a dissociable role for cue-conditioning and novelty preference on the early attentional bias for sexual cues. These findings have wider relevance as the Internet provides a broad range of novel and potentially rewarding stimuli.
publisher	Pergamon Press
publishDate	2016
url	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4683093/
_version_	1613514033188569088

Novelty, conditioning and attentional bias to sexual rewards

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