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Chapter 12 - Human Sexual Wellness _______________________________________________________

Limbic system _________________________________________________

Under the cerebral cortex lies a part of your brain called the limbic system, which is responsible for emotion. There are identical limbic systems in both of your hemispheres, but because they are in close contact with each other via the corpus callosal bridge, we can treat them as a single unit. Just as the cerebral cortex is divided into several parts, the limbic system also has several structures. Ordinarily, the cerebral cortex overrides the limbic system, that is why you don‟t act like an emotional retard twenty four seven. However, if the cerebral cortex is sedated, the limbic system takes over. Then you become basically an emotional animal. One of the major parts of the limbic system that we are concerned with is the fornix. This structure is buried deep within the temporal lobe on each side of the head. Interestingly, the fornex has a significant influence on an individual‟s libido. When the electrodes were put into a rat‟s fornex and then stimulated, they became markedly over sexed. The males would try to mount anything in their vicinity, including inanimate objects. The females became just as sexually aggressive, attempting to have sex with whatever was at their disposal, including water facets. Knowing how rats respond to the stimulation of their limbic system, a number of researchers got together and decided they would use this information to see if they could get rats to engage in homosexual behavior. Nice guys, right? They put electrodes into the fornex of a number of male rats. Then, when the rats got close to each other they stimulate their fornex. Their idea was that once they stimulated the rats, they would immediately copulate. Well, it didn‟t quite work out that way. When they stimulated the limbic system of the rats, they attacked each other violently. As a matter of fact, as soon as the rats were shocked, they would stand up on their hind legs, face the other rat, open their mouth and bare their teeth. Then, they would strike out at the other animal furiously. It was obvious that something was wrong. Upon further investigation, it was discovered that they put the electrodes in the wrong place in the limbic system. They inadvertently put the electrodes in the amygdale, another segment of the limbic system rather than the fornex. Of course, at the time no one realized that the limbic system had anything to do with violence or aggressive behavior. Thus, a whole new area of research was embarked upon. For the next few years, researchers were busy implanting electrodes into the amygdala of animals. What they found was rather interesting. For example, as mentioned, they found that if they stimulated the amygdala of rats, they would furiously attach each other. Even more fascinating was the fact that when they put a small rat in a cage with a big rat and stimulated the small rat‟s amygdale, he would still attack the big rat. This was rather starling because like with humans, there is a hierarchy in the animal kingdom. Ordinarily smaller and weaker animals will not attack bigger and more powerful animals. They will usually cower away from the more powerful animal. It seemed that when the rat‟s amygdala was stimulated he had no control of his emotions. Eventually, they took this finding to a higher level. They put a restrained cat in the cage with the rat. Naturally, when the rat saw the cat, he kept as much distance between him and the cat as possible, but when they stimulated the rat‟s amygdale, guess what happened? The darn rat attacked the


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