Alcohol and erectile response: The effects of high dosage in the context of demands to maximize sexual arousal.

Abstract

Although drinking is often associated with men's sexual activity, basic questions about alcohol's effects on men's sexual arousal remain unanswered. Inconsistencies in findings from studies examining subjective and physiological effects on erectile functioning suggest that alcohol's effects are context specific, e.g., dependent on whether one wants to maximize or suppress his arousal. To address unresolved questions about alcohol and erectile functioning, two experiments evaluated the effects of high blood alcohol concentrations (BACs) and arousal instructional demands on indices of penile circumference change and self-reported sexual arousal. In Experiment 1, a target BAC of .10% (versus .00%) attenuated peak circumference change from a neutral baseline but had no effects on average change, latency to arousal onset (a 5% increase in circumference from baseline), latency to peak achieved arousal, or subjective arousal. Instructions to maximize arousal (versus no instruction) increased subjective arousal, which was moderately correlated with physiological indices. In Experiment 2, instructions to maximize (versus suppress) arousal increased peak and mean circumference change and interacted with a target BAC of .08% (versus .00%) to influence latency to arousal onset: sober men instructed to maximize showed a shorter latency to arousal onset than did sober men instructed to suppress; however, intoxicated men did not show a differential pattern. Moreover, compared to intoxicated counterparts, sober men instructed to maximize showed a marginally shorter latency to arousal onset. Overall, alcohol and arousal instructions had small but discernible effects with young moderate drinkers. Findings highlight the importance of contextual factors in alcohol's impact on erectile functioning.

Indirect Effects of Acute Alcohol Intoxication on Sexual Risk-taking: The Roles of Subjective and Physiological Sexual Arousal

“…In the context of our vignette, alcohol could "disinhibit" subjective sexual arousal by reducing attention to inhibitory cues and thereby resulting in an intensified focus on cues impelling an erotic response. In contrast, the stimulus materials utilized in the George et al (2006) study were largely devoid of inhibitory cues. Under such low-conflict conditions, the Inhibition Conflict Model of AMT would predict null effects for alcohol.…”

Alcohol Suppresses the Electroencephalographic Response to Visual Erotic Stimuli in Young Men

“…Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) analyses were then applied to the artifact-free data in 2-s epoch samples, with the spectral graph ranging from 0.5 -30 Hz at 0.5 Hz-resolution. FFTs were performed using EEGmagic software [38] to calculate: 1) absolute power (AP), defined as the power density of each frequency band expressed in microvolts squared (μV2/Hz); 2) relative power (RP), the proportional contribution of each band to total power across 1 -30 Hz and; 3) correlation, the degree of functional coupling between the prefrontal and parietal or temporal cortices in each one of the six frequency bands monitored: namely, delta (1 -3.5 Hz), theta (4 -7.75 Hz), alpha1 (8 -10.5 Hz), alpha2 (11 -13.5 Hz), beta1 (14 -19.5 Hz) and beta2 (20)(21)(22)(23)(24)(25)(26)(27)(28)(29)(30). Correlation values were averaged over all epochs of the same condition for each subject and pair of derivations.…”

“…Several studies have demonstrated the effectiveness of erotic films in eliciting sexual arousal in humans [21][22][23] using both, questionnaires or verbal reports as well as objective measures (changes of the penile circumference) [24,25]. Associated with this sexual arousal state induced by observation of erotic films, characteristic EEG changes has been reported, such as increases in the fast frequencies and decreases in the synchronization between cortical areas of young men [26][27][28].…”

Procedure to validate sexual stimuli: reliability and validity of a set of sexual stimuli in a sample of young colombian heterosexual males.

“…Three measurements were obtained: percentage of average circumferential increase of the penis in mm, time in seconds that it takes to achieve an increase of 5% in mm circumference compared to the average of previous Neutral Stimuli (NS), and period above 5% increase. A 5% increase in mm circumference was used as threshold as was done previously George et al (2006).…”

“…Studies are observed which evaluate different types of sex offenders, including child molesters (Marshall & Marshall, in press;Michaud & Proulx, 2009), rapists Looman and Marshall (2005), sexual sadists (Marshall & Yates, 2004;Proulx, Blais, & Beauregard, 2006) and exhibitionists Kolářský and Madlafousek (1983). Other studies have measured the effect of substance use on sexual response (George et al, 2006;Harte, 2014),distractions to sexual stimuli Anderson and Hamilton (2014), cognitive mechanisms linked to arousal Both, Laan, and Everaerd (2011) or implications of arousal in condom use Janssen et al (2014). All these aspects are relevant to sexual health, and it is important to have reliable and valid assessment methods, as this may impact theory testing, decisions regarding the effectiveness of a psychological treatment, experimental verification of the impact of one or more independent variables, etc.…”