The limbic area is closely connected with the hypothalamus where the gonadotrophin hormones originate. These induce the testes to produce spermatozoa and the sex hormones found’in men, and the ovaries to secrete the sex hormones which control the menstrual cycle in women.
It also seems, from experiments on male squirrel monkeys, that the messages from the sex centre in the limbic area of the brain which help the animal get an erection and have an orgasm are funnelled through the hypothalamus to the brain stem. It is probable that this also happens in man. A treatment of male sex offenders, practised at one time in Germany, was to implant an electrode in the region of the front part of the hypothalamus and to destroy the nerve pathways by passing an electric current through the electrode. The eleven men treated in this way by Dr Roder lost all their sexual drive after the operation, although they were unchanged in every other way and continued to secrete the male sex hormone, testosterone.
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