PhD Conferral Mrs. Geraldine Rodriguez Nieto, MSc.

"Relax ! Don’t do it … The psychological and physiological mechanisms underlying sexual inhibition"

In order to better understand the fundamental mechanisms that allow people to inhibit their sexual behaviour we performed different studies that led to the following results: I) The ability to inhibit sexual incoming information and the ability to inhibit sexually motivated actions constitute different processes, engage different neural networks and are not related to a general inhibitory capacity. II) Through non-invasive brain stimulation it was possible to improve the capacity to inhibit sexual incoming information in individuals who reported being highly sexually excitable. III) Cortisol modulated the brain activity during the approach of sexual stimuli, which seems to be one of the mechanisms linking mood and sexual behaviour. IV) High levels of testosterone and low levels of self-control relate to hypersexual tendencies.