Sexual Experience Promotes Adult Neurogenesis in the Hippocampus Despite an Initial Elevation in Stress Hormones

If I'm reading this correctly and can extrapolate to humans for those who get this post stroke anxiety(20% chance)  your doctor should be ensuring you have sex at least 14 days in a row.  Which way will your doctor be incompetent? NOT knowing, Or NOT doing? Some bias here, they did not test female rats.

Sexual Experience Promotes Adult Neurogenesis in the Hippocampus Despite an Initial Elevation in Stress Hormones

• Benedetta Leuner, 
• Erica R. Glasper, 
• Elizabeth Gould

x

• Published: July 14, 2010
• https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0011597

• Article
• Authors
• Metrics
• Comments
• Media Coverage

• Abstract
• Introduction
• Materials and Methods
• Results
• Discussion
• Acknowledgments
• Author Contributions
• References

• Reader Comments (1)
• Media Coverage (6)
• Figures

Abstract

Aversive stressful experiences are typically associated with increased anxiety and a predisposition to develop mood disorders. Negative stress also suppresses adult neurogenesis and restricts dendritic architecture in the hippocampus, a brain region associated with anxiety regulation. The effects of aversive stress on hippocampal structure and function have been linked to stress-induced elevations in glucocorticoids. Normalizing corticosterone levels prevents some of the deleterious consequences of stress, including increased anxiety and suppressed structural plasticity in the hippocampus. Here we examined whether a rewarding stressor, namely sexual experience, also adversely affects hippocampal structure and function in adult rats. Adult male rats were exposed to a sexually-receptive female once (acute) or once daily for 14 consecutive days (chronic) and levels of circulating glucocorticoids were measured. Separate cohorts of sexually experienced rats were injected with the thymidine analog bromodeoxyuridine in order to measure cell proliferation and neurogenesis in the hippocampus. In addition, brains were processed using Golgi impregnation to assess the effects of sexual experience on dendritic spines and dendritic complexity in the hippocampus. Finally, to evaluate whether sexual experience alters hippocampal function, rats were tested on two tests of anxiety-like behavior: novelty suppressed feeding and the elevated plus maze. We found that acute sexual experience increased circulating corticosterone levels and the number of new neurons in the hippocampus. Chronic sexual experience no longer produced an increase in corticosterone levels but continued to promote adult neurogenesis and stimulate the growth of dendritic spines and dendritic architecture. Chronic sexual experience also reduced anxiety-like behavior. These findings suggest that a rewarding experience not only buffers against the deleterious actions of early elevated glucocorticoids but actually promotes neuronal growth and reduces anxiety.

Figures

  

Citation: Leuner B, Glasper ER, Gould E (2010) Sexual Experience Promotes Adult Neurogenesis in the Hippocampus Despite an Initial Elevation in Stress Hormones. PLoS ONE 5(7): e11597. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0011597
Editor: Melissa Coleman, Claremont Colleges, United States of America
Received: March 30, 2010; Accepted: June 17, 2010; Published: July 14, 2010
Copyright: © 2010 Leuner et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Funding: The work was supported by a Young Investigator Award from the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression (B.L.), grants from the National Institute of Mental Health (MH084148 to B.L. and MH54970 to E.G.) and a Ruth L. Kirschstein postdoctoral NRSA fellowship from the National Institute on Aging (E.R.G.). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.