Noradrenergic modulation of neural erotic stimulus perception

Belohnung und das Opioidsystem

“…Darüber hinaus wird das dopaminerge Belohnungssystem durch weitere Neuromodulatoren beeinflusst. So konnten wir in unserer Abteilung die Beeinflussung des dopaminergen Belohnungssystems durch das Serotonin-und Noradrenalinsystem mittels funktioneller Magnetresonanztomografie (fMRT) bildgebend darstellen (12)(13)(14)(15)(16)(17). In diesem Artikel sollen grundlegende Mechanismen und klinische Aspekte zur Beeinflussung des dopaminergen Belohnungssystems durch das Opioidsystem vorgestellt werden.…”

Differential Noradrenergic Modulation of Monetary Reward and Visual Erotic Stimulus Processing

“…We investigated 20 healthy, heterosexual, male, right-handed subjects under a sub-chronic medication with amisulpride (AMS), reboxetine (REB), and placebo (PLA) in a randomized counterbalanced order as Graf et al ( 14 ). Due to cerebral pathology (gliotic lesions) in one subject and technical MRI-artifacts during the reward paradigm in two subjects, we had to exclude three subjects from further analyses, resulting in a final sample size of 17 participants.…”

“…To complement our findings on serotonergic and dopaminergic/noradrenergic agents, we further investigated neural correlates of primary rewards by fMRI and visual erotic stimulation under the antipsychotic amisulpride and the selective noradrenaline reuptake inhibitor (SNRI) reboxetine compared to placebo in healthy subjects ( 13 , 14 ). Here, subjective sexual behavior along with corresponding neural activations were not altered by amisulpride compared to placebo, presumably due to its prodopaminergic properties under low dosages (200 mg/d) ( 15 , 16 ) as used in this study.…”

“…Here, subjective sexual behavior along with corresponding neural activations were not altered by amisulpride compared to placebo, presumably due to its prodopaminergic properties under low dosages (200 mg/d) ( 15 , 16 ) as used in this study. Indeed, neural activations within regions corresponding to motivational and emotional aspects of sexual behavior were attenuated under the noradrenergic agent reboxetine accompanied by decreased subjective sexual functioning ( 14 ). However, a general dampening of the neural reward system e.g., within the Nacc under reboxetine as observed in this study with primary rewards ( 14 ), seemed not intuitive considering the role of the noradrenergic system in the optimization of reward-seeking behavior ( 17 ), learning rate ( 18 ), and prediction error ( 19 , 20 ).…”

“…Thus, we now examined neural correlates of secondary reward and prediction error processing under reboxetine and amisulpride compared to placebo within the same healthy study sample in which we recently investigated the hedonic aspects of primary rewards by visual erotic picture stimulation ( 14 ). Paralleling our previous investigations on serotonergic agents ( 11 ), we focused on the Nacc as core region of the mesolimbic dopaminergic system ( 4 , 5 ) and expected unimpaired neural prediction error signals under the noradrenergic antidepressant reboxetine.…”