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["Anna Barr" <annaebarr AT hotmail.com>]

http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/science/01/29/science.sex.reut/index.html

Study: Male monkeys approach sex head first
Thursday, January 29, 2004 Posted: 2:17 PM EST (1917 GMT)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- Some people may joke that men don't think with their 
heads when it comes to sex, but a study in monkeys suggests the brain plays 
a significant role in the decision to mate, researchers reported.

Brain scans of tiny marmoset monkeys show a lot of thought goes into 
choosing mates, the team at the University of Wisconsin-Madison said.

They used functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, to look at the 
brain functions of the Brazilian monkeys. Writing in the Journal of Magnetic 
Resonance Imaging, they said the brains became busy when the monkeys smelled 
sexy scents.

"We were surprised to observe high levels of neural activity in areas of the 
brain important for decision-making, as well as in purely sexual arousal 
areas, in response to olfactory cues," psychology professor Charles Snowdon 
said in a statement.

"Lighting up far more brightly than we expected were areas associated with 
decision-making and memory, emotional processing and reward, and cognitive 
control."

Like people, common marmosets live in family groups and do not mate freely 
with one another. They must make careful choices.

Snowdon's team studied four male marmosets, offering them gland secretion 
samples from females at or close to ovulation. They also let the monkeys 
smell samples from females whose ovaries had been removed, and who therefore 
were not fertile and, presumably, not sexy.

The researchers were surprised to see how much more of the animals' brain 
lit up when they smelled the samples from fertile females -- including areas 
of complex, cognitive reasoning.

"This is the first time anyone has imaged an awake nonhuman primate in 
response to emotionally arousing stimuli. It is also the first link between 
external sexual odors and the internal sexual arousal system," Snowdon said. 
"This opens up a whole new field of research possibilities."

He said the marmoset data corresponded surprisingly closely to human fMRI 
studies.

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