Sex consists of a complicated jumble of impulses and interactions between partners. All this time, the brain has an even more complex jumble of chemicals. Neuroscientists have learned a lot about the neural mechanisms that underlie sex, but questions about the processes that arrange the order of events during sex remain unanswered.
Although research from the past has identified the brain areas that determine how mice initiate sex, other steps of copulation are still mysteries. A team of researchers in China and Japan has investigated which brain regions and neurotransmitters are responsible for different phases during sex. A Paper published on March 19 in the diary Neuron Describes what exactly happens in a mouse brain during sex.
The paper specifically shows what happens in the male mouse brain while they are concerned with sex. “Through this study we understand how ejaculation is regulated in the brain,” says the first author of the paper Ai MiyasakaA postgraduate neuroscientific researcher at the University of Tsukuba in Japan. By studying neural activity in male mice during sex, Miyasaka and her team have identified two important neurotransmitters in the game in the different stages of sex: dopamine and acetylcholine.
This finding shows a concept that researchers had previously rejected. “Neuroscientists did not believe that dopamine plays a crucial role in the regulation of ejaculation,” says Miyasaka.
The pairs of dopamine and acetylcholine is the core of the study. This article represents a “milestone study that arranges, unraveled the neural mechanisms that arrange sequentially male sexual behavior”, ChangeA professor in neuroscience at Xi’an Jiaotong University in China who was not involved in the study, explained in an e -mail on Popular science.
In particular, the chemical coupling underlines a great discovery. “The beauty of the paper is the jumble between dopamine and acetylcholine,” says Stephen ZhangA university teacher of neural science at New York University that was not involved in the study. It appears that this newly observed, Dynamic Tangle orchestrates the order of events that men perform during sex.
Dopamine Figures in motion, memory, attention and other functions, but is perhaps the best associated with reward and good feelings. When a cool sip of water or a sturdy meal feels better, it is dopamine that rewards you for survival. Reproduction is also crucial for survival, so our brains evolved to give us a good feeling, so that we would reproduce more.
Acetylcholine Plays a role in learning, attention, excitement and other brain functions, depending on which types of receptors it binds, as a lock that fits in a key. It is crucial that it also regulates dopamine.
In particular, the team looked at the double roles of dopamine and acetylcholine in a part of the brain called the Core AccumbensThat action, motivation and reward routes modules. Within this structure, the team concentrated on an area called the Ventral Shell.
The researchers used fiberTotometry systems to detect neurotransmitters, injecting the mice with fluorescent sensors. This injection revealed how the chemical messengers of the brain functioned during different stages of sex in the core accumbens. If the brain would then let go of dopamine and acetylcholine, an optical fiber would flash.
These systems revealed that acetylcholine released rhythmically in the mouse brains and acetylcholine in the run -up to intromission – the invasion of the penis into the vagina. During intromission, dopamine and acetylcholine would regularly oscillate in the brain with the thrust movements of the mouse. In mice that ejaculated, dopamine delayed considerably in the transition from intromission to ejaculation before he rises quickly.
“I think it really displays the interplay between the dopamine and acetylcholine us in this specific behavioral context,” says Zhang. He is mainly intrigued that these oscillations are “phase-locked” for the behavior of the animal-which means that they are generated in the context of specific stages of sex. “That is surprising and new and exciting for me.”
Analyzing activity of dopamine receptors also strengthened the role that this neurotransmitter plays in changing stages of sexual behavior. Miyasaka and her team watched D2R and D1R, two large dopamine receptors, during intromission. If the researcher artificially activated D1R receptors in this phase, the mice would go back to assembly. But if the researcher activated D2R, the mice would stop completely. This manipulation determines the dopamine -signaling mechanism that helps sexual behavior to follow the correct order of events: assembly, intromission and ejaculation.
This discovery can lead to possible sexual therapies. “This can contribute to the development of clinical therapy for premature ejaculation,” says Miyakasa. Pharmaceutical applications can focus on the release of dopamine to regulate how the brain releases these neurotransmitters that we now know are the key to ejaculation.
However, Zhang sees a larger image. For him, the methodology of this article talks about a larger research potential for neuroscience. “The fact that we can record these signals, such as dopamine and acetylcholine, is important for the study of drug abuse or attention,” he says. “There are many, many different lines of insight.”
“I don’t see this as a mating behavioral study,” says Zhang. “It will inspire other studies that study the Wirwar between dopamine and acetylcholine.”