"It's a question of lust
It's a question of trust
It's a question of not letting
What we've built up
Crumble to dust"
-- "A Question of Lust," Depeche Mode
WINNIPEG, Canada—Most animals are filled with lust, but only humans appear able to control it, sometimes.
Studies have found tha all birds and mammals, including humans, get hot and bothered and now research into that area has gone hi-tech.
The Winnipeg Free Press reports increasing use by scientists of devices such as functional magnetic resonance imaging, which have yielded results indicating that infidelity, watching erotica and other promiscuous-minded behavior impact the "reward circuitry" in the human brain.
Researchers at the University of Montreal found that erotica greatly impacts various areas of the human brain, while Northwestern University studies found lust and cuckoldry are nearly "compulsive" because of a direct result of their impact on the brain's reward centers.
Studies Down Under have come up with similar findings, including University of Melbourne research that indicates lust intensity depends on the size of the amygdala in the brain. Rutgers University's Helen Fisher told the newspaper that lust is entwined in brain systems that are different from those dealing with love or affection and surprise: testosterone revs up lust.
At Rutgers University, Cornell and other colleges, studies found promiscuity and infidelity in mammals such as elk, mice, squirrels, deer, wolves, hares, rabbits and most birds are based in specific brain activity and are a common occurance.
Researchers agree that lust likely evolved to generate mating behavior in animals, but only humans can control those impulses, because our brain systems are more complex than birds and most other mammals.
Nevertheless, when it comes to humans compiled research indicates 50 percent of all married women, and 55 per cent of married men engage in some form infidelity, the Free Press said, while about 81 percent of women and 86 percent of men engage in flirting. So much for that control.
Despite anything a preacher might say, the human brain has no "sin center," according to the U.S. National Institutes of Health, while data that includes the "Human Connectone Project" has revealed that porn impacts on all the brain's reward centers. And how many of us didn't need neuroimaging studies to figure that one out?
