Vaginocervical stimulation selectively increases metabolic activity in the rat brain.

ABSTRACT

Vaginocervical stimulation affects progesterone secretion, sperm transport, sexual receptivity, locomotion, and perception of pain in female rats. In this experiment, vaginocervical stimulation produced statistically significant increases in the metabolic uptake of carbon-14-labeled 2-deoxy-D-glucose in the following brain areas (ordered by magnitude of uptake) medial preoptic, mesencephalic reticular formation, bed nucleus of stria terminalis, dorsal raphe, and globus pallidus. The results provide information about the concurrent processing of sensory stimulation by several neural areas and indicate that the medial preoptic area is a receiving area for copulatory stimulation.