The Chemistry of Connection: How the Oxytocin Response Can Help You Find Trust, Intimacy, and Love by Susan Kuchinskas

Author:Susan Kuchinskas [Kuchinskas, Susan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781608825059
Publisher: New Harbinger Publications
Published: 2009-04-01T18:30:00+00:00

His and Her Arousal

A man’s sexual excitement turns up the volume in the hypothalamus, the brain’s oxytocin factory. During this arousal period, the hypothalamus releases oxytocin into the spinal cord, where it travels to the nerves that control erectile tissue. Far from being a woman thing, oxytocin is critical for getting the penis up (Argiolas and Melis 2004).

Experiments with rats show just how crucial it is for male sexual activity—and also how, even in these lowly rodents, sex starts in the brain. You can reliably create erections in a male rat by injecting oxytocin into its brain, whereas an injection into its bloodstream increases the number of ejaculations the rat can produce in a given period while reducing the resting time it needs between ejaculations (Pfaus and Everitt 2000). By the way, sildenafil, the drug sold as Viagra to help men with erectile dysfunction, also increases the amount of oxytocin released by the pituitary glands of rats (Jackson 2007).

There’s no comparable research on women. We could speculate that, because the human female’s genitals are analogous to the male’s, their brain structures are the same, and their biochemistries are similar (except for the different levels of sex hormones), oxytocin is just as important for engorgement of the clitoris as it is for erection of the penis.

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