The Affective Neuroscience of Sexuality: Development of a LUST Scale

Emphasizing concepts and rationale over mathematical minutiae, this is the most widely used, complete, and accessible structural equation modeling (SEM) text. Continuing the tradition of using real data examples from a variety of disciplines, the significantly revised fourth edition incorporates recent developments such as Pearl's graphing theory and the structural causal model (SCM), measurement invariance, and more. Readers gain a comprehensive understanding of all phases of SEM, from data collection and screening to the interpretation and reporting of the results. Learning is enhanced by exercises with answers, rules to remember, and topic boxes. The companion website supplies data, syntax, and output for the book's examples--now including files for Amos, EQS, LISREL, Mplus, Stata, and R (lavaan).<br><br> New to This Edition<br> *Extensively revised to cover important new topics: Pearl's graphing theory and the SCM, causal inference frameworks, conditional process modeling, path models for longitudinal data, item response theory, and more.<br> *Chapters on best practices in all stages of SEM, measurement invariance in confirmatory factor analysis, and significance testing issues and bootstrapping.<br> *Expanded coverage of psychometrics.<br> *Additional computer tools: online files for all detailed examples, previously provided in EQS, LISREL, and Mplus, are now also given in Amos, Stata, and R (lavaan).<br> *Reorganized to cover the specification, identification, and analysis of observed variable models separately from latent variable models.<br><br> Pedagogical Features<br> *Exercises with answers, plus end-of-chapter annotated lists of further reading.<br> *Real examples of troublesome data, demonstrating how to handle typical problems in analyses.<br> *Topic boxes on specialized issues, such as causes of nonpositive definite correlations.<br> *Boxed rules to remember.<br> *Website promoting a learn-by-doing approach, including syntax and data files for six widely used SEM computer tools.

Pleasure is mediated by well-developed mesocorticolimbic circuitry and serves adaptive functions. In affective disorders, anhedonia (lack of pleasure) or dysphoria (negative affect) can result from breakdowns of that hedonic system. Human neuroimaging studies indicate that surprisingly similar circuitry is activated by quite diverse pleasures, suggesting a common neural currency shared by all. Wanting for reward is generated by a large and distributed brain system. Liking, or pleasure itself, is generated by a smaller set of hedonic hot spots within limbic circuitry. Those hot spots also can be embedded in broader anatomical patterns of valence organization, such as in a keyboard pattern of nucleus accumbens generators for desire versus dread. In contrast, some of the best known textbook candidates for pleasure generators, including classic pleasure electrodes and the mesolimbic dopamine system, may not generate pleasure after all. These emerging insights into brain pleasure mechanisms may eventually facilitate better treatments for affective disorders.