ArticlePsychophysiology2012
Evidence for a curvilinear relationship between sympathetic nervous system activation and women's physiological sexual arousal.
Article in Psychophysiology, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 32 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
32 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- What Are the Physical Demands of Sexual Intercourse? A Systematic Review of the Literature.Archives of sexual behavior · 2022Pooled it
- Relationship Between Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and Sexual Difficulties: A Systematic Review of Veterans and Military Personnel.The journal of sexual medicine · 2021Pooled it
- Trial
- Exercise improves sexual function in women taking antidepressants: results from a randomized crossover trial.Depression and anxiety · 2014Trial
- Mining the Gaps: Rethinking Divergence Between Biological and Self-Report Measures in the Study of Sexual Diversity.American journal of human biology : the official journal of the Human Biology Council · 2026Review
- Different faces of anxiety in sexual dysfunction: key features, effective interventions, and critical implications for health care professionals-ESSM position statements.Sexual medicine · 2025Review
- Tiredness/fatigue and sexuality in everyday life: Findings from an ecological momentary assessment.Journal of neural transmission (Vienna, Austria : 1996) · 2025Article
- Development of a Sexological Ontology.Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Review
- Victim Sexual Arousal During Nonconsensual Sex: A Scoping Review.Archives of sexual behavior · 2024Article
- Consequences of spinal cord injury on the sympathetic nervous system.Frontiers in cellular neuroscience · 2023Review
- Excitation Transfer Between Sexual Arousal and Other Emotions in a Community Sample.Archives of sexual behavior · 2022Article
- Sexual arousal after abuse: (Mal)adaptations of the local immune response.Brain, behavior, and immunity · 2022Article
- Sexual violence history predicts changes in vaginal immune parameters during sexual arousal.Brain, behavior, and immunity · 2022Article
- Inflammation Predicts Sexual Arousability in Healthy Women.Comprehensive psychoneuroendocrinology · 2021Article
- Mind-body-spirit model for the medical management of female sexual well-being.Current sexual health reports · 2020Article
- Article
- Posttraumatic Stress and Sexual Satisfaction in Husbands and Wives: A Dyadic Analysis.Archives of sexual behavior · 2020Article
- Sexual Desire among Veterans Receiving Prolonged Exposure Therapy for PTSD: Does Successful PTSD Treatment Also Yield Improvements in Sexual Desire?Psychiatry · 2020Article
- Understanding sexual arousal and subjective-genital arousal desynchrony in women.Nature reviews. Urology · 2019Review
- Anxiety and Performance in Sex, Sport, and Stage: Identifying Common Ground.Frontiers in psychology · 2019Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
There is increasing evidence that women's physiological sexual arousal is facilitated by moderate sympathetic nervous system (SNS) activation. Literature also suggests that the level of SNS activation may play a role in the degree to which SNS activity affects sexual arousal. We provide the first empirical examination of a possible curvilinear relationship between SNS activity and women's genital arousal using a direct measure of SNS activation in 52 sexually functional women. The relationship between heart rate variability (HRV), a specific and sensitive marker of SNS activation, and vaginal pulse amplitude (VPA), a measure of genital arousal, was analyzed. Moderate increases in SNS activity were associated with higher genital arousal, while very low or very high SNS activation was associated with lower genital arousal. These findings imply that there is an optimal level of SNS activation for women's physiological sexual arousal.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.