CENTRAL CONTROL OF ERECTILE FUNCTION

Central mechanisms, both supraspinal and spinal, play an important role in erectile function. A ‘natural’ erection is initiated in the brain as a result of sexual stimuli which require processing and integration in order to initiate an appropriate erectile response. Visual, olfactory, tactile and imaginative stimuli from the occipital lobe, rhinencephalon, thalamus and limbic system, respectively, are integrated and processed into erectile responses in two small hypothalamic nuclei, the paraventricular nucleus (PVN) and medial preoptic area (MPOA). The role of the MPOA is to recognize sensory stimuli from

the higher brain centers and integrate them with sexual motivation and copulatory motor programmes, (McKenna,1998), while PVN plays a key role in the erectile response (Eaton  et al.,1991).