AUTHOR=Rodriguez Geraldine , Sack Alexander T. , Dewitte Marieke , Schuhmann Teresa 

TITLE=Inhibit My Disinhibition: The Role of the Inferior Frontal Cortex in Sexual Inhibition and the Modulatory Influence of Sexual Excitation Proneness

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Human Neuroscience

VOLUME=Volume 12 - 2018

YEAR=2018

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/human-neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2018.00300

DOI=10.3389/fnhum.2018.00300

ISSN=1662-5161

ABSTRACT=Sexual behavior is the result of an interplay between distinct neural inhibitory and excitatory mechanisms. While much research has focused on the neural correlates of response inhibition, highlighting a prominent role of the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), very little is known regarding the neural mechanism underlying different aspects of sexual inhibition. Here, we experimentally combined functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to i) test the functional role of IFG during motivational and cognitive sexual inhibition and ii) reveal whether this IFG involvement depends on sexual excitation as a trait, as proposed by the Dual Control Model of sexual response. Twenty-two participants performed an Approach-Avoidance and a Negative Affective Priming paradigm to assess motivational and cognitive sexual inhibition respectively. Our fMRI study showed IFG being selectively activated during cognitive but not motivational sexual inhibition. Importantly, the level of this neural activity was modulated by individual sexual excitation scores. Interestingly, a transient disruption of IFG activity using TMS led to an improvement in cognitive, not motivational, sexual inhibition, but only when accounting for individual sexual excitation scores. These findings clearly document that sexual excitation modulates IFG activity levels during cognitive sexual inhibition, and at the same time determines the effects of TMS on IFG by improving cognitive control exclusively for individuals with high sexual excitation scores. These findings provide new insights regarding the functional role of IFG, and underscore the relevance of individual psychological differences in understanding the brain mechanisms underlying socioaffective processes.