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In this episode, Dr. Rena Malik, MD is joined by neuroscientist Dr. Jim Pfaus to explore the neuroscience of sexual attraction, desire, and bonding. They discuss how early sexual experiences shape our preferences, the role of dopamine and oxytocin in relationships, the impact of hookup culture and pornography, and the science behind sexual synchrony. Listeners will gain insightful perspectives on the brain’s influence over intimacy, pleasure, and partner connection, along with practical takeaways for fostering deeper relationships.
00:00:00 Introduction
00:00:26 Guest background & episode topics
00:01:43 Brain and sexual attraction
00:06:39 First sexual experiences
00:12:08 Navigating bad sexual experiences
00:15:18 Masturbation, porn, and impact
00:23:17 Sexual synchrony and bonding
00:33:31 Orgasm: brain chemistry
00:44:09 Semen retention & arousal
00:51:34 Porn, compulsion, and addiction
01:01:04 Oxytocin and bonding
01:12:20 Neuroplasticity, love, and long-term relationships
01:22:36 Sexual trauma and healing the brain
01:33:10 How hookup culture rewires desire
01:42:44 Takeaways
You can find papers by Dr. Pfaus on ResearchGate.
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This is a fascinating, rambling, and wide-ranging interview. Find a topic that interests you and dig in. Then listen to the whole thing. I’m particularly interested in the discussion of Oxytocin and bonding (starting at 01:01:04 and pretty much going on through to the end).
Why? Because I’ve been thinking about oxytocin ever since I read Walter Freeman’s Societies of Brains: A Study in the Neuroscience of Love and Hate (1995). Freeman was speculating about the role of intense ritual mediated by music and suggested that oxytocin would be released during such rituals and that that would facilitate bonding between the participants. What’s interesting, though, is the mechanism he suggested: Oxytocin released during the ritual would loosen the connectivity between neurons in the brains of individuals. The result would be that, as connectivity was reestablished, the patterns of connectivity within individuals would be similar across the population of participants, thus reducing their differences. I found that fascinating and made it central to my book on music, Beethoven’s Anvil: Music in Mind and Culture (2001), though in a somewhat different form, which I discussed in chapters two and three.
This is quite different from the discussion in the video, which is about pair-bonding between individuals. Malik and Pfaus are interested in the role of post-coital cuddling where bonding between the pair is mediated by oxytocin. Crudely put, when individuals cuddle there’s bonding, no cuddling, no bonding. But individuals can choose whether or not they cuddle, no? Yes. So what’s the range of “viable lifestyle choices”? (Ugh! what a phrase!) We don’t know.
So I’ll trot out my standard metaphor for the relationship between biology and culture: chess. Biology provides the basic rules of the game: the game board, the individual pieces, and the moves each piece is allowed to make. But there is a great deal of latitude in how one deploys those pieces during actual gameplay. That’s where culture comes in. The tactics and strategies one uses, that’s culture.
Biology doesn’t dictate behavior, not for individuals, not for whole societies. But it places constraints on behavior. Those constrains, by the very fact of constraint, open up possibilities for design and structure. This video is about some of those biologically-given constraints. As for the possibilities they open up, that remains to be seen.
I’d say that we have a lot of work to do. Well, it may be work for the scientists. But for the rest of us, it looks like play to me.
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