Humans have been having sex for a long time. For most of that period, we have been searching for ways to make sex more enjoyable.
Aphrodisiacs are foodstuffs or other substances proposed to heighten our libido and improve our sexual enjoyment and performance. Named after the Greek goddess of love, Aphrodite, aphrodisiacs have been described, exhorted, and ingested for thousands of years. Proposed aphrodisiacs include grocery store essentials, like strawberries, luxury options like raw oysters, and traditional extracts like yohimbine, derived from the bark of a West African evergreen.
But do these compounds work?
The perfect aphrodisiac would enhance both the desire for sex and the pleasure gained from having sex. The challenge is that these two features are governed by separate brain circuits, says Kent Berridge, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of Michigan.
Berridge says that for over 50 years, scientists thought pleasure’s neural origin was the mesolimbic pathway, which transports the neurotransmitter dopamine around the brain. “We all thought that the dopamine system was pleasure, that turning on dopamine would generate pleasure,” says Berridge.
This assumption made a lot of sense–the dopamine system is activated by pleasurable stimuli in our environment. Behavioral studies showed cues that predict pleasure also activated these dopamine pathways. Subsequent research has instead suggested dopamine governs the desire for pleasure, rather than pleasure itself. Increasing dopamine in test animals didn’t make them enjoy pleasurable stimuli more.
Read the complete article in Popular Science
