How to Measure Female Desire

A Sexual Laboratory of One's Own, aka A Clean Well-Lighted Place for SexPsychophysiologic studies of sexual response should be done in a comfortable, well-designed laboratory to minimize subject anxiety and discomfort (Woodard & Diamond, 2009, Fig. 5). How do scientists measure the physiological aspects of sexual arousal in women? A 2009 paper by Woodard and Diamond reviewed 45 years of research using instruments that measure female sexual function. These devices include the vaginal photoplethysmograph (right), vaginal and labial thermistors, pressure/compliance balloons, clitoral electromyography, and the electrovaginogram. For a full list, see Table 1 at the bottom of this post.The authors note that these physiological measures do not correlate very well with subjective ratings of sexual arousal. Furthermore, clinicians who treat women with sexual dysfunctions are of two minds. Some say the distinction between female desire and arousal may be artificial (see DSM-5 changes, p. 13), while others maintain that the merger of female sexual arousal disorder (FSAD) with Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder (HSDD) will be disastrous (Clayton et al., 2012).The previous post about Lybrido and Lybridos, the drugs in clinical trials for HSDD, talked briefly about Emotional Brain, the Dutch drug company that is developing them. Putting aside the many objections to the HSDD diagnosis for now, and the fact that the trials pathologize sexual boredom within marriage, the compan...

Source: The Neurocritic - June 9, 2013 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Authors: The Neurocritic Source Type: blogs