Functional imaging of brain activity in conscious monkeys responding to sexually arousing cues

Ferris, Craig F.; Snowdon, Charles T.; King, Jean A.; Duong, Timothy Q.; Ziegler, Toni E.; Uğurbil, Kâmil; Ludwig, Reinhold; Schultz-Darken, Nancy; Wu, Zhong; Olson, David P.; Sullivan, John M.; Tannenbaum, Pamela L.; Vaughan, J. Thomas

doi:10.1097/00001756-200107200-00037

Cited by 97 publications

(75 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…Prior to each stimulus presentation, we also gathered data in the absence of any stimuli. We found support for our hypothesis (Ferris et al 2001). There was a significantly increased activation of both the MPOA and AH in response to odours of both ovulatory and anovulatory females relative to vehicle control and no stimulus controls (figure 1).…”

Section: How Social Odours Affect the Brain And Neuroendocrine Systemssupporting

confidence: 88%

Social odours, sexual arousal and pairbonding in primates

Snowdon

Ziegler

Schultz-Darken³

et al. 2006

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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We describe the role of social odours in sexual arousal and maintaining pairbonds in biparental and cooperatively breeding primates. Social odours are complex chemical mixtures produced by an organism that can simultaneously provide information about species, kinship, sex, individuality and reproductive state. They are long lasting and have advantages over other modalities. Both sexes are sensitive to changes in odours over the reproductive cycle and experimental disruption of signals can lead to altered sexual behaviour within a pair. We demonstrate, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), that social odours indicating reproductive state directly influence the brain areas responsible for sexual behaviour. Social odours also influence other brain areas typically involved in motivation, memory and decision making, suggesting that these signals have more complex functions in primates than mere sexual arousal. We demonstrate a rapid link between social odours and neuroendocrine responses that are modulated by a male's social status. Recent work on humans shows similar responses to social odours. We conclude with an integration of the importance of social odours on sexual arousal and maintaining pairbonds in socially biparental and cooperatively breeding species, suggesting new research directions to integrate social behaviour, neural activation and neuroendocrine responses.

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Section: How Social Odours Affect the Brain And Neuroendocrine Systemssupporting

confidence: 88%

Social odours, sexual arousal and pairbonding in primates

Snowdon

Ziegler

Schultz-Darken³

et al. 2006

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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“…Instead, we suggest that humans do not rely on their sense of smell as much as apes. For example, certain aspects of monkey social behavior and mating choice have been suggested to be influenced by the olfactory system (22)(23)(24)(25). Although it has not been established that the OR genes are responsible for these functions, it is tempting to speculate that a lesser need for the sense of smell in humans may be manifested in relaxed evolutionary constraints, resulting in a higher rate of OR coding region disruption in humans.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Human specific loss of olfactory receptor genes

Gilad

Man

Pääbo

et al. 2003

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

266

153

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Olfactory receptor (OR) genes constitute the basis for the sense of smell and are encoded by the largest mammalian gene superfamily of >1,000 genes. In humans, >60% of these are pseudogenes. In contrast, the mouse OR repertoire, although of roughly equal size, contains only Ϸ20% pseudogenes. We asked whether the high fraction of nonfunctional OR genes is specific to humans or is a common feature of all primates. To this end, we have compared the sequences of 50 human OR coding regions, regardless of their functional annotations, to those of their putative orthologs in chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans, and rhesus macaques. We found that humans have accumulated mutations that disrupt OR coding regions roughly 4-fold faster than any other species sampled. As a consequence, the fraction of OR pseudogenes in humans is almost twice as high as in the non-human primates, suggesting a human-specific process of OR gene disruption, likely due to a reduced chemosensory dependence relative to apes.

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“…The striatum (caudate nucleus, putamen, globus pallidus) contains cells that respond to food and drink reward and it is activated by monetary reward stimuli (Elliott et al, 2003;Knutson et al, 2001;Schultz, 2000), by cocaine (Breiter and Rosen, 1999;Breiter et al, 1997), and sexual arousal in human and monkey (Arnow et al, 2002;Ferris et al, 2001;Karama et al, 2002;Rauch et al, 1999;Stoleru et al, 1999). The hypothalamic activation specific to romantic love could reflect the component of erotic arousal inherent to this sentiment (Arnow et al, 2002;Ferris et al, 2001;Karama et al, 2002). All regions commonly activated here have been involved in reward, although with less spatial specificity, for example, after acute administration of euphoria-inducing drugs such as cocaine (Breiter and Rosen, 1999;Breiter et al, 1997;Schlaepfer et al, 1998).…”

Section: Attachment and Rewardmentioning

confidence: 99%