Sexual experience in female rodents: Cellular mechanisms and functional consequences

Abstract

The neurobiology of female sexual behavior has largely focused on mechanisms of hormone action on nerve cells and how these effects translate into the display of copulatory motor patterns. Of equal importance, though less studied, are some of the consequences of engaging in sexual behavior, including the rewarding properties of sexual interactions and how sexual experience alters copulatory efficiency. This review summarizes the effects of sexual experience on reward processes and copulation in female Syrian hamsters. Neural correlates of these sexual interactions include longterm cellular changes in dopamine transmission and postsynaptic signaling pathways related to neuronal plasticity (e.g., dendritic spine formation). Taken together, these studies suggest that sexual experience enhances the reinforcing properties of sexual behavior, which has the coincident outcome of increasing copulatory efficiency in a way that can increase reproductive success.

Concurrent Exposure to Methamphetamine and Sexual Behavior Enhances Subsequent Drug Reward and Causes Compulsive Sexual Behavior in Male Rats

“…Longlasting changes in dendritic spine density and morphology in the accumbens result from repeated drug administration ( and Kolb, 2004) or sexual experience (Meisel and Mullins, 2006;Pitchers et al, 2010), and are hypothesized to mediate druginduced locomotor and reward sensitization (Pierce and Kalivas, 1997;Vanderschuren and Kalivas, 2000;Li et al, 2004). The basolateral amygdala is critical for memory of conditioned stimuli associated with drug stimuli (Grace and Rosenkranz, 2002;Laviolette and Grace, 2006) and involved in reward sensitization and reinforcement (Everitt et al, 1999;Cardinal et al, 2002;See, 2002).…”

Natural and Drug Rewards Act on Common Neural Plasticity Mechanisms with ΔFosB as a Key Mediator

“…Moreover, sexual experience induces neural plasticity in the NAc similar to that induced by psychostimulant exposure, including increased dendritic spine density (Meisel and Mullins, 2006;Pitchers et al, 2010a), altered glutamate receptor trafficking, and decreased synaptic strength in prefrontal cortex-responding NAc shell neurons (Pitchers et al, 2012). Finally, periods of abstinence from sexual experience were found to be critical for enhanced Amph reward, NAc spinogenesis (Pitchers et al, 2010a), and glutamate receptor trafficking (Pitchers et al, 2012).…”

Cell-type specific increases in female hamster nucleus accumbens spine density following female sexual experience

“…A fundamental property of the mesolimbic dopamine system is its exquisite plasticity, which is presumed to regulate adaptive changes in motivated behaviors (Humphries and Prescott, 2010). Sexual behavior has emerged as one such model of motivated behavior in which synaptic plasticity within the mesolimbic system is accompanied by behavioral changes associated with increased reproductive success (Frohmader et al, 2010; Meisel and Mullins, 2006). …”