The role of ovarian hormones in sexual reward states of the female rat

Zhao

Frontiers in Neuroendocrinology

et al. 2016

Accumulated research supports the idea that exercise could be an option of potential prevention and treatment for drug addiction. During the past few years, there has been increased interest in investigating of sex differences in exercise and drug addiction. This demonstrates that sex-specific exercise intervention strategies may be important for preventing and treating drug addiction in men and women. However, little is known about how and why sex differences are found when doing exercise-induced interventions for drug addiction. In this review, we included both animal and human that pulled subjects from a varied age demographic, as well as neurobiological mechanisms that may highlight the sex-related differences in these potential to assess the impact of sex-specific roles in drug addiction and exercise therapies.

Section: Sex Differences In Drug Addictionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sex differences in drug addiction and response to exercise intervention: From human to animal studies

Zhao

Frontiers in Neuroendocrinology

et al. 2016

“…The effects are mainly inhibitory [ 132 , 134 – 137 ]. The details of the observed effects were, however, complex [ 131 , 133 , 138 ], rather variable, for instance those on ejaculation latencies and of naloxone [ 134 , 139 – 142 ]. Also the effects of ejaculation, and erotic stimuli (in humans) did not lead to consistent results when measuring the peripheral β-END levels [ 132 , 143 – 147 ].…”

Section: Behavioral Regulation By β-Endorphinmentioning

confidence: 99%

The effects of Beta-Endorphin: state change modification

Veening

Barendregt

2015

Fluids Barriers CNS

Beta-endorphin (β-END) is an opioid neuropeptide which has an important role in the development of hypotheses concerning the non-synaptic or paracrine communication of brain messages. This kind of communication between neurons has been designated volume transmission (VT) to differentiate it clearly from synaptic communication. VT occurs over short as well as long distances via the extracellular space in the brain, as well as via the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) flowing through the ventricular spaces inside the brain and the arachnoid space surrounding the central nervous system (CNS). To understand how β-END can have specific behavioral effects, we use the notion behavioral state, inspired by the concept of machine state, coming from Turing (Proc London Math Soc, Series 2,42:230-265, 1937). In section 1.4 the sequential organization of male rat behavior is explained showing that an animal is not free to switch into another state at any given moment. Funneling-constraints restrict the number of possible behavioral transitions in specific phases while at other moments in the sequence the transition to other behavioral states is almost completely open. The effects of β-END on behaviors like food intake and sexual behavior, and the mechanisms involved in reward, meditation and pain control are discussed in detail. The effects on the sequential organization of behavior and on state transitions dominate the description of these effects.

Socioaffective Neuroscience & Psychology

“…CLS applied in intervals to mimic its distribution during paced copulation induces a strong CPP relative to continuous CLS or a control condition in which the female's tail is raised but no CLS is applied. Interestingly, the CPP induced by CLS is independent of hormone administration to ovariectomized females (Parada, Vargas, Kyres, Burnside, & Pfaus, 2012). CLS induces immediate 50 kHz vocalizations that follow individual trill-flat patterns (Fig.…”

Section: Effects Of Repeated Pleasurable Copulatory Stimulationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Do rats have orgasms?

Pfaus

Scardochio

Parada

et al. 2016

Self Cite

BackgroundAlthough humans experience orgasms with a degree of statistical regularity, they remain among the most enigmatic of sexual responses; difficult to define and even more difficult to study empirically. The question of whether animals experience orgasms is hampered by similar lack of definition and the additional necessity of making inferences from behavioral responses.MethodHere we define three behavioral criteria, based on dimensions of the subjective experience of human orgasms described by Mah and Binik, to infer orgasm-like responses (OLRs) in other species: 1) physiological criteria that include pelvic floor and anal muscle contractions that stimulate seminal emission and/or ejaculation in the male, or that stimulate uterine and cervical contractions in the female; 2) short-term behavioral changes that reflect immediate awareness of a pleasurable hedonic reward state during copulation; and 3) long-term behavioral changes that depend on the reward state induced by the OLR, including sexual satiety, the strengthening of patterns of sexual arousal and desire in subsequent copulations, and the generation of conditioned place and partner preferences for contextual and partner-related cues associated with the reward state. We then examine whether physiological and behavioral data from observations of male and female rats during copulation, and in sexually-conditioned place- and partner-preference paradigms, are consistent with these criteria.ResultsBoth male and female rats display behavioral patterns consistent with OLRs.ConclusionsThe ability to infer OLRs in rats offers new possibilities to study the phenomenon in neurobiological and molecular detail, and to provide both comparative and translational perspectives that would be useful for both basic and clinical research.