Essay Questions
3. How does the brain control sexual behaviour?
Key Points:
- Discuss the role of the preoptic area in males in the control of sexual behaviour, and how this has been found to be the case through experimentation (e.g. lesions of this region permanently abolish male sexual behaviour).
- Discuss the role of the preoptic area in females in the control of reproductive cycles and sexual behaviour.
- Discuss the role of the ventromedial nucleus of the hypothalamus (VMH) in sexual behaviour.
- Consider how the brain helps us to understand sexual arousal at the sight and smell of someone to whom we are sexually attracted.
- Explain how the neural control of sexual behaviour may be organized in a similar way to the neural controls of motivational behaviour for food.
- Point out that much research remains to be carried out into how the amygdala, orbitofrontal cortex, preoptic area and hypothalamus represent the motivational rewards underlying sexual behaviour.
