Read Online What Do Women Want?: Adventures in the Science of Female Desire by Daniel Bergner - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Daniel Bergner
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embodiment of desire, its main chemical carrier. It isn’t only that; it speeds through a multitude of the brain’s subregions and exists in infinite relationships with other neurotransmitters and has all sorts of effects, from motor control (the trembling and sluggishness of Parkinson’s patients stem from a shortage of dopamine) to memory. But dopamine is the substance of lust. And by way of his mini deli slicer, Pfaus had narrowed his sights on two tiny territories at the brain’s primal core, the medial preoptic area and the ventral tegmental area. These were the heart of dopamine’s sexual system, he said, “the ground zero of desire.”
From this primitive epicenter, dopamine radiates outward. “A dopamine rush is a lust-pleasure,” Pfaus continued. “It’s a heightening of everything. It’s smelling a lover up close—a woman inhaling that T-shirt. It’s starting to screw; it’s wanting to have; it’s wanting more.”
Yet for the excitement of dopamine to fix on an object, for it to be felt as desire rather than as a splintering into attentional chaos, it has to work in balance with other neurotransmitters. Serotonin plays an indispensable part. Unlike dopamine’s keen drive, he said, serotonin dampens. Unlike dopamine’s lust, serotonin instills satiation. Flood female rats with antidepressants—like the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, the SSRIs—that bolster serotonin, and the females will spend less time courting males. They will also bend their spines less fully, raising their butts less completely, to accommodate the males they do mate with.
It was important, Pfaus emphasized, to understand serotonin’s virtues. They go beyond keeping depression at bay. The neurotransmitter also allows the brain’s frontal lobe, more precisely the prefrontal cortex, the region of planning and self-control, to communicate effectively within the organ, to exert what’s known as executive function. Serotonin reduces urgent need and impulse; it facilitates sensible thoughts and orderly actions. The problem, though, is that if serotonin is too strong in relation to dopamine, a woman making love is likely to find herself thinking about the next day’s schedule rather than feeling overtaken by sensation and craving. But with serotonin and dopamine in the right balance, erotic energy will be neither displaced by tomorrow’s to-do list nor permitted to fracture into chaos. With the frontal lobe and the libidinous core in harmony, desire can have both form and force.
For all the agility of his deli slicer, which could be set to the width of a micron, Pfaus was nowhere near to completely capturing the interplay of neurotransmitters. But a third type of transmitter essential to eros, he said, are the opioids, which surge with orgasm and also spike in tandem with dopamine’s drive, so that glimpsing a lover’s muscular chest or reading a paragraph of erotica offer a minor wave of opioid bliss. Describing this pleasure, he talked about the opioids’ most potent varieties, the products of poppies: morphine, heroin. Send these drugs into the brain and satisfaction is so thorough—so much stronger than serotonin’s well-being—that inertia takes hold. Both the executive region and the lustful center are quelled; direction and drive are nullified. In the less potent forms supplied by orgasm, the opioid rush lulls to lesser degrees. Meanwhile, a paradoxical process kicks in. Even while the opioids are quieting motivation, they are preparing the brain to be motivated again by somehow stoking the dopamine system. Orgasms simultaneously subdue the brain and teach it to seek more climaxes. Maybe even regardless of orgasm—for Pfaus couldn’t be sure his female rats were climaxing—he saw the power of opioid bliss in his lab. Infuse female rats with a chemical that blocks this ecstasy, and they lose their desire to have sex at all.
Pfaus, whose hoop earring cast a gleam, whose mind bounced always between
From this primitive epicenter, dopamine radiates outward. “A dopamine rush is a lust-pleasure,” Pfaus continued. “It’s a heightening of everything. It’s smelling a lover up close—a woman inhaling that T-shirt. It’s starting to screw; it’s wanting to have; it’s wanting more.”
Yet for the excitement of dopamine to fix on an object, for it to be felt as desire rather than as a splintering into attentional chaos, it has to work in balance with other neurotransmitters. Serotonin plays an indispensable part. Unlike dopamine’s keen drive, he said, serotonin dampens. Unlike dopamine’s lust, serotonin instills satiation. Flood female rats with antidepressants—like the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, the SSRIs—that bolster serotonin, and the females will spend less time courting males. They will also bend their spines less fully, raising their butts less completely, to accommodate the males they do mate with.
It was important, Pfaus emphasized, to understand serotonin’s virtues. They go beyond keeping depression at bay. The neurotransmitter also allows the brain’s frontal lobe, more precisely the prefrontal cortex, the region of planning and self-control, to communicate effectively within the organ, to exert what’s known as executive function. Serotonin reduces urgent need and impulse; it facilitates sensible thoughts and orderly actions. The problem, though, is that if serotonin is too strong in relation to dopamine, a woman making love is likely to find herself thinking about the next day’s schedule rather than feeling overtaken by sensation and craving. But with serotonin and dopamine in the right balance, erotic energy will be neither displaced by tomorrow’s to-do list nor permitted to fracture into chaos. With the frontal lobe and the libidinous core in harmony, desire can have both form and force.
For all the agility of his deli slicer, which could be set to the width of a micron, Pfaus was nowhere near to completely capturing the interplay of neurotransmitters. But a third type of transmitter essential to eros, he said, are the opioids, which surge with orgasm and also spike in tandem with dopamine’s drive, so that glimpsing a lover’s muscular chest or reading a paragraph of erotica offer a minor wave of opioid bliss. Describing this pleasure, he talked about the opioids’ most potent varieties, the products of poppies: morphine, heroin. Send these drugs into the brain and satisfaction is so thorough—so much stronger than serotonin’s well-being—that inertia takes hold. Both the executive region and the lustful center are quelled; direction and drive are nullified. In the less potent forms supplied by orgasm, the opioid rush lulls to lesser degrees. Meanwhile, a paradoxical process kicks in. Even while the opioids are quieting motivation, they are preparing the brain to be motivated again by somehow stoking the dopamine system. Orgasms simultaneously subdue the brain and teach it to seek more climaxes. Maybe even regardless of orgasm—for Pfaus couldn’t be sure his female rats were climaxing—he saw the power of opioid bliss in his lab. Infuse female rats with a chemical that blocks this ecstasy, and they lose their desire to have sex at all.
Pfaus, whose hoop earring cast a gleam, whose mind bounced always between
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