Introductory Editorial to ‘The Neuroscience and Evolutionary Origins of Sexual Learning’

W e (your guest editors) have established a productive professional and personal relationship through discussions of the role of experience and, in particular, basic learning processes in shaping sexuality in humans and animals. We are grateful to Harold Mouras as well as our contributors for allowing us to organize this special issue of Socio-affective Neuroscience & Psychology, which highlights what we believe to be an underrepresented perspective in the scientific study of sexual behavior and psychology. Craig (1912, 1918) suggested, and Zitovitch (as cited by Pavlov, 1928) as well as Á more recently Á Hall, Arnold and Myers (2000) have demonstrated that behaviors as straightforward as approaching food, and water require learning. Surely (human) sexuality, for which the approach is even more complicated, is shaped by experience. We offer nine papers from leading researchers in the field that we hope will inspire divergent thinking and scholarship regarding the evolution and development of sexual preferences in both humans and animals. In our lead article, Woodson situates learned sexuality Á biologically predisposed, possibly irreversible, learning about stimulus properties of a sexual incentive Á in a broader cultural context (Woodson, 2012). He discusses how good intentions, false dichotomies, and tradition from both outside as well as within the fields of neuroscience and psychology continue to impair the optimal integration of learned sexuality in understanding the development of sexual preferences. Pfaus, Kippin, and Coria-Avila (2003) has persuasively argued that many evolutionary endpoints of sexual behavior are well-conserved across species, including appetitive and consummatory aspects. Hence, non-human models offer powerful tools both for establishing causal links between conditioning processes and sexual behavior and also for investigating the neurochemical and hormonal systems that underlie such learning in humans. Three of the articles in this special issue present recent, exciting data from the well-established experimental models, of sexual learning in rats and Japanese quail. Coria-Avila (2012) reviews animal studies on the development of partner preference with a focus on how the experience of reward and some of its key neurochemical correlates (i.e. dopamine and peptide neurotransmitters) impact heterosexual, and homosexual partner preference in rats. Holloway (2012) reviews the literature on the role of opioid peptides in learned sexual behavior in animals. He addresses inconsistencies in the literature, potentially moderated by the use of different species, paradigms, and procedures, and proposes that opioids may mediate the persistence of conditioned sexual responding in the absence of reward. Domjan, Mahometa …