Reaction of the autonomic nervous system in case of conflict of goals

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Christian Kaernbach
• Subject Area: General, Cognitive and Mathematical Psychology
• Term: from 2013 to 2018
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 229295526

The autonomic nervous system (ANS) is rather immune to voluntary cognitive control. In the literature it is often concluded that is acts as a reflex loop that answers a certain stimulation with a hard-wired reaction. In a pilot study with male participants we could demonstrate a complex interaction of two different autonomous reactions: the reaction to food stimuli and the reaction to sexual stimuli. These two stimulus categories appeal to incompatible action scripts: Food intake is generally not compatible with sexual activity. In our study we showed that the autonomous reaction to food stimuli ceased in the presence of simultaneous sexual stimuli. This can be seen as evidence of a regulation performance of the ANS serving goal-directed behavior by preparing only one of two incompatible actions. This study shall be replicated and varied and extend to female participants in order to study in detail the constraints of the decision of the ANS for one or the other of two incompatible actions. The extension to female participants will also allow to test possible interpretations from an evolutionary perspective.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants