Hormones and Female Sex Behavior
How do gonadal steroids affect the nervous system to stimulate sex behavior?
both estrogen and progesterone are needed to stimulate female sex behavior--if you ovariectomize (OVX) a female rat, she will not show proceptive nor receptive behaviors
if you OVX a female rat + administer estrogen for 1 to 2 days + single injection of progesterone-->sex behavior will occur 4 hours after the progesterone injection (“activational effects” of gonadal sterodis)
- rise in estrogen primes the brain to respond to progesterone
- rise in progesterone times the onset of behavioral estrus
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ventromedial nucleus of the hypothalamus (VMH) plays an important role in hormonal modulation of lordosis
estrogen and progesterone act, in part, at the VMH to stimulate the display of lordosis in response to mounting by a male