Mark Megahan
A recent research study indicates that men and mice have something in common which will make women really upset to learn. We may have developed behavioral overrides and social conditioning to cope with it but males are hard wired to mate with any new female they see. That means, males everywhere declare, it’s a scientific fact your man really can’t help it when he keeps getting caught with other women.
Men and mice are mammals
The study was done on mice but appears to apply to human men too. As that one hit wonder used to go, “you and me baby ain’t nothin’ but mammals.” Mice and humans also seem to share the same hardwired trait with birds.
Culturally, we may be conditioned to the serial monogamy concept of one partner at a time but the circuits of male brains are hardwired to bleep everything in sight. Literally.
Of course, you can expect some really freaky new drugs to be hitting the market once they get FDA approval but for now, the researchers are sticking with mice. Dr. Nirao Shah, a professor of psychiatry and neurobiology at Stanford University School of Medicine, is quick to point out that their mouse study doesn’t apply exactly to human men because “we’re a lot more complicated.”
We still have the same chip buried in our deep cortex, though. Dr. Shah has a female to go home to so needs to make sure the disclaimer gets a big bold highlight up at the top. “There are analogous anatomical counterparts we think in the human brain, but of course their function in the human brain remains to be determined.”
His team has “singled out in lab mice a brain region that controls sexual interest, libido, mating behavior and pleasure.” Don’t be surprised to notice that men behave in similar ways as the mice they studied.
The region of the brain containing the bio-code wetware “uses sensory input from the environment to recognize the sex of another mouse.” The first thing that goes through the mind of a mouse on seeing a female is, “aha, this is a female, maybe I can mate if she’s willing.”
Blame it on ‘Substance P’
The same circuit handles three separate functions which researchers expected to be processed discreetly in both men and mice. “We had no reason to believe that this POA region would not only control the act of mating, but also regulate the desire to mate or regulate the pleasurable feelings elicited by mating,” Shah relates.
“In principle, those three aspects of sexual behavior—the act of mating, the physical act itself, the urge to mate and the pleasure that accompanies it—those could be embodied in different brain regions,” he added. “But what we found is that the POA has these attributes.” POA is the “preoptic area of the hypothalamus.”
Their early work enabled them to “turn on and off male mice’s recognition of an unfamiliar female mouse by manipulating neurons that communicate to the POA from the amygdala, which is the seat of human emotion.” That’s the “bed nucleus of the stria terminalis, or BNST.”
From that, they zeroed in on “a small set of genetically distinct BNST neurons that secrete a slow-acting signaling protein, or peptide, called Substance P.” Forget about adrenochrome, men will say. This stuff is the shiznit. Those little blue pills are nothing compared to Substance P.
About 10 to 15 minutes after stimulating mice with Substance P-secreting BNST neurons, “male mice would go through their full sequence of mating behavior—mounting, penetration and ejaculation.” Whether there was another mouse there or not. “Directly infusing the peptide to the POA accelerated mating behavior; in fact, direct activation of the circuit even led to mating with inanimate objects, the findings showed.”
They also found out the mouse was ready and rarin’ to go for another round in minutes, compared with it’s usual two day recovery period. Cutting off Substance P had a similar effect. “When we switch off the center, the POA in the male mouse, he simply stops mating,” Shah explains. “Even if he has a willing female in his cage. Even if there’s no danger. Even if there’s ample food. He just stops mating.” Men who are sex offenders can look forward to getting that pill soon.
