At the base of the brain, inside the hypothalamus, and coursing through specialized dopamine-releasing neurons, there is a signaling pathway that regulates the sex drive, that is, the motivation to engage in mating behavior. The specialized neurons and the signaling pathway were recently identified by researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC).
In experiments with mice, the researchers optogenetically stimulated dopamine-releasing neurons in different brain areas to recapitulate the priming effect that male mice experience upon exposure to female mice. The researchers found that neurons in different brain areas, such as the medial preoptic area (MPOA) and the nucleus accumbens (NAc) exhibit different kinetics of cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP) clearance that enable persistent or episodic modes of neuromodulation.
