Summary of Testosterone and unconscious positive priming increase human motivation separately Aarts and van Honk (2009)

conducted a series of experiments on 24 healthy young adult females to determine the effects of testosterone injections and subliminal positive priming on motivation to engage in certain behaviours. Previous research in the field indicates that low/depleting testosterone levels cause lack of motivation while increased testosterone levels moderate working brain structures involved in motivation. Subliminal positive priming is the process of presenting subjects with a fast, consciously inconceivable presentation of a behaviour or action followed with a conscious presentation of a positive cue. Studies involving subliminal positive priming have shown that motivation to engage in everyday behaviours can be significantly increased using this technique. Aarts and van Honk furthered these findings by proposing that testosterone administration paired with positive priming would substantially increase motivation to engage in primed behaviours. In their experiment, the subjects were randomly assigned to a testosterone administration or placebo (control) condition. Both groups were then unconsciously presented with 10 everyday behaviours (i.e. doing puzzles, drinking water), 5 of which were consciously paired with a positive word (i.e. nice) and 5 that were consciously paired with a neutral word (i.e. such). Subjects were then asked to rate on an 11-point scale whether or not they would like to engage in the behaviour presented during trial, a score of 1 indicated no preference to engage in behaviour, and 11 being high preference to engage in behaviour. It was found that in the placebo condition, positive priming resulted in a significant rise in motivation compared with the neutral priming condition. Interestingly enough, subjects with the testosterone condition showed no significant rise in motivation in response to positive priming, but they did indeed show a significantly more motivation to engage in behaviours after neutral priming. This indicates the absence of the effects of joint contribution of testosterone with positive priming. The authors conclude that testosterone causally increases our general motivation to engage in behaviour, providing evidence that testosterone modulates working of subcortical networks involved in reward processing and motivation. They also conclude that subliminal priming of an action cause subjects to be more motivated to engage in the behaviour, but only when the primed action was paired with a positive cue afterwards. Priming procedures are generally related to cortical structures. Although testosterone modulates subcortical networks in the brain, it does not add motivation to subjects that have already been positively primed for an action/behaviour. Two explanations are considered, the first one being that motivational systems in the subcortical and cortical regions have become functionally disconnected with administration of testosterone, precluding the joint contribution with positive priming. The second explanation is the idea that a ceiling or limit in motivation exists, where either testosterone or positive priming would fill up its motivation quota. The authors argue that the limit theory is unlikely because subjects in the positively primed condition indicate that they would only like to engage in the primed behaviour 6.4 out of 11 points, there is a lot of room for improvement in motivation.

Subliminal instrumental conditioning demonstrated in human brain Hypothesis Based on the idea that the brain uses the proportions of success and failure to make future decisions These computations are expressed in the striatum and are consciously unavailable as the striatum is cognitively impenetrable (represent an unconscious learning mechanism) Poker players can improve their gambles through learned association between monetary outcomes and subliminal behavioural manifestations of their opponents (gamblers tell) Idea that instrumental condition can occur subliminally

Methods 20 subjects presented with novel abstract symbols that were scrambled and mixed to create masked images It was ensured that subjects could not differentiate b/w the masked cues, they reasoned that if they cant discriminate then they also cant build conscious representations of cue-outcome associations Instrumental condition task, Ss had to choose between pressing or not pressing button in response to masked cues (if cue was in masked symbol they would choose same) o Cross fixation mask cue mask choice o Ss had to learn to associate the cue with the mask to get money 1 pound, they could either choose to not answer in which they would not get any money, or they could choose the risk choice where they could answer same or different, if the answer was correct they would get 1 pound, if incorrect they would lose 1 point

Results Subjects performed at above chance level, on average they won 7.5 pounds +/- 1.8pounds, the risky response was chosen more frequently and they were more often correct This shows that subliminal conditioning can occur It was important for Aarts and van Honk to use subliminal conditioning to compare with testosterone because the effects of testosterone are not consciously perceived.

Decoupling of midfrontal delta-beta oscillations after testosterone administration Reductions in behavioural inhibition and anxiety (anxiolytic) have been found after administrating the steroid hormone testosterone Testosterone exerts these anxiolytic effects through receptor binding in steroid response networks located in subcortical structures Increases in delta synchronization = reduced anxiety, because testosterone reduces anxiety it might be that testosterone influences delta synchronization specifically and affects the coupling between subcortical lower and cortical higher frequencies

Beta synchronization are native to cortical regions (thalamo-cortical and cortico-cortical)

Methods Results Significant increase in delta power after testosterone administration over the midfrontal Delta and beta oscillation coupling in placebo condition is observed, while it is completely abolished in the testosterone condition due to increases in subcortical delta power Along with data that shows behavioural disinhibitory properties of T, relationships between different frequency bandwidths seem to provide important insights into function and dysfunctional affective processes in the brain 16 right handed Ss were enrolled in placebo, double-blind, within-subjects cross over design After 2 testing phases, they were given testosterone or placebo Measure with EEG the frequency of brain waves

Rewarding affective propertites of intra-nucleus accumbens injections of testosterone Hypothesis Based on previous findings using peripheral injections of testosterone suggests that interaction of T with brain structures mediating rewards occurs Nucleus accumbens mediates affective properties of various drugs in addition to rewarding effects of naturally occurring stimuli Does T induce reward by acting in same brain structure that mediates reward properties of other drugs with abuse potential in humans?

Methods 39 male long-evans rats given doses of T every other day Day 1 rats were allowed to move freely in three compartments of a wooden box for 10 min (2 were exactly the same painted white with wood chips scattered on floor and one was painted black with a floor covered with wire mesh) with entrances to all componenets open Day 2-9 the rats either had hormone or saline pairings, each rat was assigned a pairing compartment and a testosterone dose Half got T first before white, and got saline before black other half was vice versa On day 10 they were allowed to move freely with no hormone injection

Results -

Found that they spent most time in compartment paired with T Can be addictive to humans Intra-accumbens injections of T are sufficient to produce reward