HORMONES AND MATING BEHAVIOR 



1209 



thyroxine, or .stilbestrol, whereas intromis- 

 sions and the length of the refractory period 

 were unaffected. Inhibition of the pituitary 

 was assumed to account for this alteration 

 in the pattern and Soulairac concluded tliat 

 the primary factor for the regulation of ejac- 

 ulation resides in this gland. The frecjuency 

 of intromissions and the duration of cop- 

 ulatory activity, on the other hand, were 

 increased by the neuro-excitatory drugs, 

 caffeine and strychnine; these elements 

 therefore were concluded to be dependent 

 on the central nervous system and sensory 

 stinuilation. Prostigmine and aneurine pro- 

 longed the refractory period without in- 

 fluencing the duration of copulatory activ- 

 ity; the refractory period therefore is 

 concluded to depend on the state of metabo- 

 lism of the nervous tissue, in particular the 

 enzymatic processes controlling synaptic 

 transmission and other neuronal activity. 



The validity of this hypothesis has yet to 

 be established. In a sense it is an extension 

 of the view that patterns of male behavior 

 are composed of appetitive and consumma- 

 tory portions (Craig, 1918; Nissen, 1929; 

 Beach, 1942e, 1947, 1956, 1958b; Baerends, 

 Brouwer and Waterbolk, 1955). The more 

 recently expressed doubt that the inter-re- 

 lationship between neural activity and be- 

 havior in the male cat is a unitary variable 

 (Rosenblatt and Aronson, 1958a) is a part 

 of the trend. If the different components of 

 sexual behavior are relatively independent, 

 as they have long appeared to be in the fe- 

 male (Young and Rundlett, 1939; Beach, 

 1943 », analysis of the mechanism of hor- 

 monal action will be greatly complicated. 

 Aliller (1957) stated that help may come 

 from studies involving electrical stimulation 

 of different parts of the brain, and it has 

 (Kawakarai and Sawyer, 1959a, b; Sawyer 

 and Kawakami, 1959), but even this opti- 

 mistic note is tempered by the enumeration 

 of complications in the articles published 

 simultaneously by Green, Clemente and de 

 Groot (1957) and by Herbert and Zucker- 

 man (1957). We have enumerated other 

 considerations which we believe must be 

 taken into account before a synthesis, cor- 

 responding to those attempted by Beach 

 (1958) and Dell (1958), of all that is in- 

 voh-cd in the hormonal stimulation of mat- 



ing behavior may be claimed. It would be 

 surprising if there are not many additional 

 considerations which are not now apparent. 



E. NONCiONADAL HORMONES AND MATING 

 BEHAVIOR 



Information bearing on the relationship 

 of nongonadal hormones to mating behavior 

 has been obtained from many studies in 

 which attention was directed particularly 

 to the pituitary, adrenal cortex, and thy- 

 roid. Because of the chemical similarity be- 

 tween adrenal cortical and gonadal hor- 

 mones, the likelihood of direct action would 

 seem greatest in the case of the adrenal 

 cortex, but except for one report based on a 

 study of the rat (Richter and Uhlenhuth, 

 1954), and another based on a clinical study 

 ( Waxenberg, Drellich and Sutherland, 1959) , 

 little evidence in support of such a possibil- 

 ity can be found. 



The results obtained by Soulairac, Teys- 

 seyre and Soulairac (1955) following the in- 

 jection of cortisone into male rats are ad- 

 mittedly difficult to interpret; at the best 

 an indirect rather than a direct action is in- 

 dicated. Desoxycorticosterone acetate ad- 

 ministered to castrated male hamsters did 

 not increase their sexual activity (Warren 

 and Aronson, 1956), nor did adrenalectomy 

 of the mature male appreciably effect repro- 

 ductive behavior or the ability to impreg- 

 nate females when the animals were main- 

 tained on desoxycorticosterone acetate. As 

 we have noted (p. 1199), desoxycorticoster- 

 one acetate (van Heuverswyn, Collins, Wil- 

 liams and Gardner, 1939; Marvin, 1958; 

 Melampy, Emmerson, Rakes, Hanka and 

 Eness, 1957), an aciueous adrenal cortical 

 extract (Torstveit and Mellish, 1941), and 

 a number of other steroids isolated from the 

 adrenal cortex or having adrenal hormone- 

 like activity (Byrnes and Shipley, 1955) 

 substituted for progesterone in the induction 

 of estrus in spayed guinea pigs and ovariec- 

 tomized cows, but all lacked the potency of 

 progesterone. 



Ring (1945) postulated that estrogen in- 

 jected into the spayed female rat indirectly 

 stimulates the adrenal cortex to release sub- 

 stances having progesterone activity and 

 that estrus might result from the synergistic 

 action of the two liormones. The writer does 



