Is it normal to be turned on by violence

Unlike with cats and rats, zapping a male mouse's hypothalamus with electricity fails to make it more bellicose. To understand which other areas might be implicated in violent behaviour, Lin and Anderson's team exposed male mice to consecutive encounters with other intruding male and female mice. They then examined the brain areas activated by the encounters by labelling brain cells with a fluorescent tag that can distinguish recently active neurons.

Surprisingly, neurons within a region called the ventromedial hypothalamus VMH snapped into action during fights — but also during sex. Perplexed, the team implanted male mice with electrodes capable of measuring single cells in this area of the brain and watched what happened when mice fought or mated. Most of the neurons fired specifically during sex or bouts of violence, but a handful fired during both of these seemingly opposing behaviours. The researchers next infected neurons in this region with a virus that inserts a gene that renders them responsive to blue light — a technique called optogenetics.

With an optic fibre implanted into the brains of these mice, Lin and Anderson could fire these neurons on command. When they did so, male mice wasted little time attacking other intruding males.

Activating neurons in the aggression centre also provoked assaults on castrated males, whom males would usually ignore, as well as anesthetized animals and even an inflated laboratory glove.

Switching on these neurons also drove males to attack females see video — but only up to a point. When males first encountered a female, activating the neurons sent them into attack mode. However, if sex had already ensued, the researchers could not elicit the mice to attack. It doesn't listen to anything else," Lin says.

However, activating the aggression circuit post-coitus provoked a swift attack on the female. Quieting the aggression centre also stopped mice from acting on violent urges. Animals expressing a gene in these cells that silences them didn't attack intruding males, though their sexual appetites remained.

Lin and Anderson hypothesize that the entanglement of brain circuits involved in sex and violence could help mice to respond appropriately to intruders, whether male or female. The neurons activated by sex, they suggest, suppress the urge to lash out against an unknown female. Deep-brain electrical stimulation has linked the VMH to defensive behaviour such as panic attacks, and the region is likely to be involved in aggression as well, he says.

JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it. Female sexual arousal response to implied sexual violence. Author Lessels, Elisabeth.

Share Facebook. Metadata Show full item record. Department Psychology. Description Background: There are major physiological and psychological differences between the sexual arousal experiences of men and women. While men generally experience genital and mental arousal simultaneously, these responses seem to act independently from each other in women. It has also been suggested that female genitalia respond to all sexual stimuli, no matter how uninteresting or even aversive the woman finds them.

The prevailing theory suggests that this reflexive arousal is a defensive mechanism evolved to protect the genitals during sexual activity with lubrication. The Dilemma I am a woman in my early 20s, about to graduate from university and consider myself very independent with a healthy, normal, happy life. About two years ago I started watching porn.

I hate patriarchy and rape culture. Another issue that worries me is that now, when having sex with my boyfriend, I invent abuse stories and play them in my head in order to reach orgasm. I feel like none of this is healthy nor nurturing for my self development. Is it really that worthy of preoccupation?