REWARD ENHANCEMENT TO SEXUAL CUES  

Study Overview: This project aims to identify potential tractable points of intervention to disrupt women’s substance cravings and escalating substance use trajectories. This project will work to identify how stress, sexual desire and sexualized substance use interact to drive women’s substance cravings. It will also identify the factors most central to change in networks of women’s substance use, cravings, and mood symptoms. This project will inform development of individualized treatment and prevention efforts to interrupt disordered substance use patterns among young women before these patterns become lifelong problems. 

Biography: Tierney Lorenz (she/they) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology and the Center for Brain, Biology and Behavior at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. They received their Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of Texas at Austin in 2013 after completing an internship at the University of Washington School of Medicine. They completed their postdoctoral work at the Kinsey Institute and the Center for the Integrative Study of Animal Behavior at Indiana University. Dr. Lorenz's research examines the interaction between mental, physical and sexual health. Their lab investigates the ways that sexual behavior impacts immune and endocrine function, as well as ways to help patients with mental and physical health conditions have happy, healthy sexual lives. They also focus on helping survivors of sexual trauma through basic science and clinical research.