Effect of Neonatal Intrahypothalamic Testosterone Implants on Cyclicity and Adult Sexual Behavior in the Female Hamster

Abstract

To localize the neural sites of hormone action for sexual differentiation in the hamster, pellets containing 3 μg testosterone were implanted directly in the preoptic area-anterior hypothalamus (POA-AH) and the ventromedial hypothalamus-arcuate regions of the hypothalamus of 3-day-old female hamsters. The POA-AH implants strongly enhanced the potential for ectopic mounts, rear mounts, and intromission patterns after adult testosterone treatment. 50% of the females with neonatal POA-AH implants demonstrated vaginal acyclicity in adulthood, suggesting a significant disruption of normal gonadotropin release. Tests for female sexual behavior revealed that implants in both POA-AH and ventromedial arcuate had no significant effect on latency to lordosis or total lordosis duration with estrogen and progesterone priming, but did reduce the longest single bout of lordosis. In conjunction with other recent investigations, these findings suggest that in the hamster, as in other species, androgenization involves several independent processes in terms of both location and sensitivity to hormone exposure.