Laboratory of Neurobiology and Behavior, The Rockefeller University, New York, NY, USA.
Consultant to Medical Affairs Men's Health/Andrology, Bayer AG, Berlin, Muellerstr. 178, 13353 Berlin, Germany.
Horm Mol Biol Clin Investig. 2020 Jan 11;41(2):hmbci-2019-0055. doi: 10.1515/hmbci-2019-0055.
Background During the past 50 years, motivational studies have evolved from the logical inference of logically required "intervening variables" to explain behavioral change, to electrophysiological and molecular analyses of the mechanisms causing such changes. Aim The purpose of this review article is two-fold: first to describe the logic of sexual motivation in a way that applies to laboratory animals as well as humans, and the second is to address some of the problems of sexual motivation experienced by men. Results When problems of motivational mechanisms are stripped down to their essentials, as performed in the laboratory animal models and are available for reductionistic studies, then the problems can be solved with certainty, as illustrated in the first part of this review. However, with respect to human sexual motivation, the various determinants which include so many behavioral routes and so many brain states come into play, that definite conclusions are harder to come by, as illustrated in the second part of this review. Conclusions This review highlights a number of key questions that merit further investigation. These include (a) What mechanisms do cultural and experiential influences interact with androgenic hormone influences on human sexual motivation? (b) How would epigenetic effects in the human brain related to changes in motivation be investigated? (c) What are the effects of unpredictable traumatic and stressful human experiences on sexual motivation; (d) How such mechanisms are activated upon unpredictable traumatic and stressful insults? (e) What are the outstanding differences between sexual motivational drive and motivations driven by homeostatic systems such as hunger and thirst?
在过去的 50 年中，动机研究已经从逻辑推理中逻辑上必需的“干预变量”发展而来，以解释行为变化，到引起这种变化的电生理学和分子机制的分析。
本文的目的有两个：首先以一种适用于实验室动物和人类的方式描述性动机的逻辑，其次是解决男性在性动机方面遇到的一些问题。
当将动机机制的问题简化为其本质时，如在实验室动物模型中进行的那样，并可进行简化研究，那么就可以确定地解决这些问题，如本综述的第一部分所述。然而，就人类的性动机而言，各种决定因素包括如此多的行为途径和如此多的大脑状态，使得难以得出明确的结论，如本综述的第二部分所示。
本文强调了一些值得进一步研究的关键问题。这些问题包括：(a)文化和经验影响与雄激素激素对人类性动机的影响如何相互作用？(b)如何研究与动机变化相关的人类大脑中的表观遗传效应？(c)不可预测的创伤和压力对性动机的影响是什么？(d)不可预测的创伤和压力性刺激如何激活这些机制？(e)性动机驱动与饥饿和口渴等稳态系统驱动之间的突出区别是什么？
