Is sexual motivational state linked to dopamine release in the medial preoptic area?

摘要

The medial preoptic area (mPOA) is a key site for the dopaminergic enhancement of male sexual behavior. Dopamine release increases in the rat mPOA with mating, supporting the critical stimulatory role played by preoptic dopamine on male sexual behavior. However, it has been questioned whether dopamine is specifically related to the occurrence of male sexual behavior and not simply involved in general arousal. To address this question, we ask whether dopamine release in the mPOA is linked to the production of male sexual behavior in Japanese quail, a species that exhibits a much shorter temporal pattern of copulation than rats and does not have an intromittent organ, resulting in a very different topography of their sexual response. Extracellular samples from the mPOA of adult sexually experienced male quail were collected every six minutes before, during, and after exposure to a female using in vivo microdialysis and analyzed using HPLC-EC. Extracellular dopamine significantly increased in the presence of a female and returned to baseline after removal of the female. However, subjects who failed to copulate did not display this increased release. These findings indicate that it is not solely the presence of a female that drives dopamine release in males, but how a male responds to her. Further, in subjects that copulated, dopamine release did not change in samples collected during periods of no copulation. Together, these findings support the hypothesis that dopamine action in the mPOA is specifically linked to sexual motivation and not only copulatory behavior or physical arousal.