Nicole Prause
| Nicole Prause | |
|---|---|
| Residence | Los Angeles, California, United States |
| Fields | Sexual physiology and biotechnology |
| Institutions | Liberos LLC, Mind Research Network |
| Alma mater | Indiana University Bloomington, VA Boston Healthcare System, Harvard University |
| Known for | Studies on sexual addictions, orgasm physiology, and biosignal processing |
Nicole Prause, Ph.D is an American neuroscientist researching human sexual behaviour, addiction, and the physiology of sexual response. She is also the founder of Liberos LLC, an independent research institute.
Prause obtained her doctorate in 2007 at Indiana University Bloomington, with joint supervision by the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction. Her areas of concentration were neuroscience and statistics. Her clinical internship, in neuropsychological assessment and behavioural medicine, was with the VA Boston Healthcare System's Psychology Internship Training Program. Her research fellowship was in couples' treatment of alcoholism with Timothy O'Farrell at Harvard University.
Prause became a tenure track faculty member at Idaho State University at the age of 29. After three years there, she accepted a position as a Research Scientist at the Mind Research Network, a neuroimaging facility in Albuquerque, New Mexico. In 2012, Prause was elected a full member of the International Academy of Sex Research and accepted a position as a Research Scientist on faculty at the University of California, Los Angeles in the David Geffen School of Medicine. While there, she was promoted to Associate Research Scientist in 2014. Institutional attitudes towards sex research and ongoing safety threats from anti-porn organizations prompted her to found Liberos LLC in 2015. This private research institute and biotechnology company is funded entirely by non-profit grants from the federal government and a foundation. She also is a licensed psychologist in California.
Prause was lead author on a study that was the first to apply brain stimulation (Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation, TMS) to alter sexual responsiveness, using a high frequency form known as Theta Burst Stimulation (TBS). The same study also was the first in the USA to use primary sexual rewards in the laboratory, adopting from a history of this approach in European laboratories, to overcome the problem of sex films used as secondary reinforcers in previous research. This is thought to raise new possibilities for intervention for those with high or low sex drive, which could be altered semi-permanently by repeated TBS.
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