Scientific Understanding of Consciousness
Consciousness as an Emergent Property of Thalamocortical Activity

Sex and Consciousness

 

Sexual Orientation

A person's sexual orientation is an essential characteristic of the Self.

Sexual orientation is established prenatally early in the development of the brain's neural network. Hormones in the fetus likely modulate the neurogenesis of neurons and establish the dominant connectivity patterns of the synapses. These synaptic connectivity patterns are refined and enhanced during postnatal experiences, establishing a fascination with and attraction to body shapes and features of the opposite sex. Visual stimuli and other sensory patterns excite and resonate with the neural network's sexual orientation synaptic efficacies. These resonating synaptic patterns link to the brain's limbic system pleasure pathways to deliver a rush of dopamine to the nucleus accumbens and thereby motivate further encounters and prolonged stimulation.

Puberty begins a time of hormonal and physical changes dominated by the awakening of intense sexual feelings, with a compelling interest in the opposite sex culminating in sexual maturity.

Sexual Affects

Many sensory stimuli can have sexual connotations: visual shape of the body, olfactory stimulation of pheromones and perfume, auditory prosody of the voice, tactile feel of a hug of the body, taste of a kiss.

Sexual affects are some of the most intense sensations a person can experience. I have discovered one research study that tried to determine neural areas in the brain involved in human male ejaculation.

Pheromones

Humans, along with other animals, can emit their own pheromones, often distinctive for  an individual, which can become distinctively attractive or repulsive. Supernormal stimuli such as perfume fragrances can be used to modulate the natural pheromones.

Sexually-based Love

My hypothesis is that sexually-based love is a mutual addiction between two people involving multimodal perceptions, greatly enhanced by memory, stimulating some of the same subcortical pleasure circuitry involved in drugs of addiction.

 

 

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