Kim Wallen

..No sex differences in the contextual usage of screams emerged. These findings suggest that both life history differences and the early hormone environment contribute to sex differences in juvenile rhesus macaque vocal production...

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..Sexually differentiated behavior ultimately reflects both hormonally organized behavioral predispositions and the social experience that converts these predispositions into behavior...

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..Thus these results suggest that women exposed to lower levels of prenatal androgens are more likely to experience orgasm during sexual intercourse...

..The evolutionary pressures that produced such flexibility in sexual behavior remain puzzling, but may reflect the importance of sexuality to primate social attraction and cohesion...

..In rhesus monkeys and rodents, developmental androgen eliminates this specialization. However, these results are the only known example of better performance of females than males when salient markers are removed...

..These results suggest that behavioral compatibility may produce sex-segregation in male yearling rhesus monkeys, possibly preparing males and females for different social roles and segregation as adults...

..This study supports late gestation as a period of increased sensitivity to environmental insult and demonstrates that multiple factors, including prenatal programming, modulate the specific timing of pubertal events...

..However, it was largely unaffected by our hormone manipulations. Whether this reflects characteristics of our specific treatments or is evidence of nonhormonal influences on infant interest remains unanswered...

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..Together, these data demonstrate sex-specific preferences for specific types of stimuli even when, across stimuli, overall interest was comparable...

..Our finding that men and women attend to different aspects of the same visual sexual stimuli could reflect pre-existing cognitive biases that possibly contribute to sex differences in neural, subjective, and physiological arousal...

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..9 yawns per 30 min. These data indicate that flutamide is an effective tool for blocking the central effects of androgens in rhesus monkey females and that androgens regulate yawning similarly in both males and females...

..We offer the hypothesis that toy preferences reflect hormonally influenced behavioral and cognitive biases which are sculpted by social processes into the sex differences seen in monkeys and humans...

..80). Thus, the current study demonstrates a direct but context dependent relationship between testosterone and sexual interest in healthy young males...

..Currently, the system is being used to examine the sex differences in spatial navigation of rhesus monkeys. We expect that measures derived from the trajectory data will reveal strategies used by animals to solve spatial problems...

..These data show that tamoxifen administration increased anxiety levels, but the affect was not associated with differences in central levels of the serotonin tone...

..The relative impact of these two progestins on neuroendocrine function must be carefully explored...

..The findings suggest that women with consistent versus inconsistent patterns of same-sex sexuality might be experiencing different types of same-sex desires influenced by different factors...

..These findings illustrate that MPA and P4 have a similar impact on sexual behavior in female rats and suggest that the inhibitory effects of MPA may be attributable, at least in part, to its potent effects at the progesterone receptor...

..These results concur with previous primate studies in suggesting that opioids mediate the rewarding effects of receiving grooming and affect anxiety-related behaviors...

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..The marked increase in aggression seen during MPA treatment suggests that production of negative affect may be a particularly serious side effect of MPA...

..These differences are of practical importance to future research on sexual arousal that aims to use experimental stimuli comparably appealing to men and women and also for general understanding of cognitive sex differences...

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..Other unknowns include long-term safety, optimal types, doses and routes of therapy, which women will be more likely to benefit from (or be put at risk), and the precise interplay between the two sex hormones...

..This research extends and develops the notion that alterations in the prenatal androgen that leave no external indicators may produce life-long alterations in development and adult behavior. ..

..These therapies will also be compared on their effects on neuroendocrine function. These studies will markedly increase our understanding of the role that ovarian steroids play in modulating women's sexuality. ..

..Clinical trainees will get the opportunity to delve more deeply into the basic science underlying psychopathology while basic science trainees will come to understand the relationship between basic science and human mental illness. ..

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..The combination of these efforts will allow the PI to expand his research into new areas, while increasing his understanding of its relevance to important human mental health conditions. ..

..These data will potentially reveal social deficits that would remain undetectable by traditional observation methods. ..