Sexual Desire linked to Gene Variant

yeahright

yeahright

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The amount of sexual desire we feel--be it a lot or a little--could have more to do with genetic programming than feelings of romance, love and lust.

LiveScience and London's Daily Mail report that researchers from Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Ben Gurion University of the Negev in Israel have determined the source of our sexual desire could be in our genes, a discovery that might change how psychologists view sexuality and lead to new drugs that could alter sexual desire, raising or lowering it like a thermometer.

If the Israeli scientists are right, then low sexual desire may be a normal biological condition, and it explains why sex addicts find it so hard to change their behavior and seemingly uncontrollable urges.

To arrive at this remarkable conclusion, the research team that was led by Richard Ebstein examined the DNA of 148 healthy college-age men and women. Each participant also took a questionnaire, giving a self-description of their sexual desire, arousal and function. For example, they were asked whether a steamy sex scene in a film aroused them, how frequently they had sex and how often they thought about sex.

The researchers then compared the participants' DNA with their answers on the questionnaire and found that common variations in a sequence of DNA--specifically, the D4 receptor, which is involved in the brain's reaction to the pleasure chemical dopamine--impacted their sexual desire, arousal and function. About 30 percent of the participants had a particular variation of the D4 gene and all of them had a stronger sex drive than the others.

"Some people really do think more about sex and place a greater importance on it than others and what our study suggests is that genes may make a substantial contribution to these differences," Ebstein told the Daily Mail. "If you have a lower sex drive, it does not necessarily mean you should go to see a sex therapist to see if something is wrong with you. As long as it is not causing a problem in your life, maybe you don't have a problem. If it does not bother you or interfere with your life, then maybe you are best to just live with it."

Famous people who have admitted to being sex addicts are actors Michael Douglas and Kirk Douglas, as well as Eric Benet, Halle Berry's former husband.

This study, which is the first to identify a specific gene variation linked to sex drive, was published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry.
 
Jayhawkk

Jayhawkk

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The more studies they keep doing the less i actually think we anything more than flesh covered robots. It seems that nothing we think see or do is anything more than programming.
 
flytrapcan

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Interesting really.

Will this lead to methods of supression or the inverse?
 

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