The physiological basis for the interaction of selective attention and arousal is not clearly understood. Here we present evidence in humans that specifically implicates the thalamus in this interaction. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to measure brain activity during the performance of an attentional task under different levels of arousal. Activity evoked in the ventrolateral tha...

BACKGROUND Below average heart rate variability (HRV) has been associated with sexual arousal dysfunction and overall sexual dysfunction in women. Autogenic training, a psychophysiologic relaxation technique, has been shown to increase HRV. In a recent study, sexually healthy women experienced acute increases in physiologic (ie, genital) and subjective sexual arousal after 1 brief session of au...

INTRODUCTION Few studies have examined how sexual arousal influences healthy premenopausal women's hormones, limiting our understanding of basic physiology and our ability to transfer knowledge from clinical and nonhuman populations. AIM To examine how sexual arousal and steroid hormones (testosterone [T], cortisol [C], estradiol [E]) were linked, to see whether hormone levels influenced and/...

Abstract Sleep and arousal are both important for animals. The neurotransmitter acetylcholine (ACh) has long been found to promote sleep in mammals, an apparent paradox which also exist flies, causing much confusion understanding arousal. Here, we have systematically studied all 13 ACh receptors (AChRs) Drosophila understand mechanisms underlying function We that exogenous stimuli-induced was d...

Purpose – This paper aims to test a theoretical framework that explains arousal congruency effects on consumer perceptions of intrinsically pleasant service environments. Design/methodology/approach – A 3 (low and high target-arousal manipulation plus control group) by 3 (low, medium and high actual arousal) true experimental design was used to test our research hypotheses in a café context. Th...

OBJECTIVE To investigate the relationship between arousal and nocturnal heart rate variability (HRV) in patients with obstructive sleep apnea-hypopnea syndrome (OSAHS). METHODS Twenty-seven patients with moderate to severe OSAHS who underwent overnight polysomnography (PSG) were enrolled, excluding patients with cardiopulmonary and nervous system diseases. An hour continuous PSG monitoring in...

Although there is an extensive amount known about specific sensory and motor functions of the vertebrate brain, less is understood about the regulation of global brain states. We have recently proposed that a function termed generalized arousal (Ag) serves as the most elemental driving force in the nervous system, responsible for the initial activation of all behavioral responses. An animal wit...

OBJECTIVE Our study aimed to further elucidate the mediating role of presleep arousal in the relationship between daily stress and sleep by investigating subjective sleep quality and actigraphy-assessed sleep efficiency (SE) on both within- and between-participant levels in a sample of healthy young women. METHODS Multilevel modeling was applied on electronically assessed data comprising 14 c...

Whether emotion is universal or social is a recurrent issue in the history of emotion study among psychologists. Some researchers view emotion as a universal construct, and that a large part of emotional experience is biologically based. However, emotion is not only biologically determined, but is also influenced by the environment. Therefore, cultural differences exist in some aspects of emoti...