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Peripherally Physiological Responses to External Emotions and Their Transitions in Bipolar I Disorder With and Without Hypersexuality

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Abstract

Hypersexuality is associated with psychiatric disorders such as mania; however, it remains unclear whether bipolar I disorder with (BW) or without (BO) hypersexuality demonstrates different responses to external emotional stimuli and their transitions that were composed of pictures and sounds of same domain. In 21 BW patients, 20 BO patients, and 41 healthy volunteers, we administered polygraph tests (electrocardiogram, electromyogram, electrooculogram, and galvanic skin response) to measure transitions from a primer emotion (i.e., external disgust, erotica, fear, happiness, neutral, and sadness) to a noncongruent emotion (out of the remaining five) and to the primer emotion again (repeat-primer). We also evaluated participants’ concurrent states of mania, hypomania, and depression. With neutral as the noncongruent emotion, the heart rate difference in BW was greater than in controls when responses to the primer erotica were subtracted from responses to the repeat-primer erotica, or when to the primer sadness were subtracted from the repeat-primer sadness. The difference of the masseter electromyographic activity in BW was lower than in BO and controls when responses to the noncongruent happiness were subtracted from responses to the repeat-primer neutral, and was lower than in BO when to the noncongruent neutral were subtracted from the repeat-primer erotica. The eyeball movement difference was greater in BW than in BO and controls when responses to the noncongruent sadness were subtracted from responses to the repeat-primer neutral. The heart rate difference when responses to the primer happiness were subtracted from responses to the noncongruent neutral was negatively correlated with mania in BO. BW and BO patients behaved differently to external emotions and their transitions, particularly regarding erotica and sadness, which might characterize unique pathophysiological processes of the two bipolar I disorder subtypes.

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Acknowledgements

The study was supported by the grant from the Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 81771475) to the correspondent author (Dr. W. Wang).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Clinical Psychology and Psychiatry/School of Public Health, Zhejiang University College of Medicine, Hangzhou, China

    Chu Wang, Xu Shao, Yanli Jia & Wei Wang

  2. Department of Psychological Medicine, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

    Roger C. Ho

  3. Institute for Health Innovation and Technology (iHealthtech), National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

    Roger C. Ho

  4. School of Psychology, Charles Sturt University, Port Macquarie, NSW, Australia

    Keith M. Harris

  5. School of Psychology, The University of Queensland, St Lucia, QLD, Australia

    Keith M. Harris

  6. Department of Psychology, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, NO-7491, Trondheim, Norway

    Wei Wang

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  1. Chu Wang
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Contributions

WW conceived the study; CW, XS, YJ, RCH, and KMH contributed to the study design; CW, XS, and YJ collected and analyzed the data; and CW and WW drafted the paper. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Wei Wang.

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Wang, C., Shao, X., Jia, Y. et al. Peripherally Physiological Responses to External Emotions and Their Transitions in Bipolar I Disorder With and Without Hypersexuality. Arch Sex Behav 49, 1345–1354 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-019-01615-8

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