View Single Post
 
Old Sep 30, 2009, 03:34 AM
GrayNess GrayNess is offline
Member
 
Member Since: Feb 2009
Location: Canada
Posts: 228
Quote:
Originally Posted by Shoe View Post
Thanks for the lesson in neurology Grayness. A book that you might find interesting is Social Intelligence by Daniel Goleman. He states that men are more stimulated by visual clues where women are more into smell. It is a really interesting book full of studies and neurology terminology. He also talks about the high road and the low road of the brain. The high road is a lot slower and mainly in the neocortex and is more involved with responding where as the low road is a lot faster and mainly about reacting. It is a simple way of describing it though and there is not a black/white division as you know.
You're welcome for the brief lesson. I'll check that book out when my schedule allows.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Shoe View Post
Psych medications do affect our sex lives. Most anti-psychotics block dopamine receptors. The biggest release of dopamine is when we have sex. There is also an inverse relationship between serotonin and dopamine. The more serotonin the less dopamine and vise-a-versa . That is why anti-depressants like Prozac that keep more serotonin floating around tend to lessen one's sex drive. I got all of that information from Dean Hamer's The God Gene. Also a very good book. ~Shoe
This is fairly true, however, it's an idealistic view. Medications usually have side-effects and so the reasons for why one's sex drive may be decreased may lie outside the reasons of 5-HT and DA. I'm not saying that decreasing 5-HT won't reduce one's sex drive but rather that there are plenty of other reasons and because the neural pathways are so interconnected, changing one pathway can affect another pathway and other areas of the brain and so forth. Each of these changes can lead to a decrease in sex drive.