My Psychology

The (maybe) soon-to-be-approved “female Viagra” releases the brain’s sexual brakes. The drug flibanserin, intended to treat low sexual desire in women, isn’t exactly the pink version of the little blue pill. Rather than pushing blood flow to the genitals, flibanserin targets key neurotransmitters that are involved in sexual response: dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin. The drug increases the amount of dopamine and norepinephrine, which are like the brain’s accelerators when it comes to sexual response; at the same time, it turns down the level of serotonin, which is responsible for inhibition. Since 2010, the FDA has twice shot down flibanserin. Each time, the drug manufacturers couldn’t prove to a review panel that the medication’s benefits were greater than the risks it posed. Flibanserin gets a third chance at approval this summer — this month, an advisory panel was convinced that flibanserin is safe to use for women taking antidepressants and that the drug does...

Nine Things We Now Know About What Turns Us On 1.  Porn isn’t going to screw up your sex drive. You’ve likely heard that pornography can be destructive for real-life relationships. Too much porn, the thinking goes, desensitizes the viewer to erotic images and makes it more difficult to become aroused in real-life sexy situations. Some have even claimed that men who frequently watch online porn are more likely to struggle with erectile dysfunction. Earlier this year, however, a pair of studies were published that found no correlation between porn viewing and erectile dysfunction. Other research has even suggested that both men and women with a casual porn habit report having more frequent and higher-quality sex compared with people who don’t watch porn. 2. Bisexual men tend to be more sexually adventurous over all than gay or straight men. Previous research had suggested that bisexual men’s bodies respond more strongly to erotic images of men than to those of w...