The role dopamine plays in our brains is vast as there are numerous sub receptors for the neurotransmitter varying from pleasure, to cognition, and motor ability, etc. In regards to sex and food, the dopaminergic pathways mainly run through the “low road” of our brains or our mid-brain. Reward pathways run through our prefrontal cortex the “high road” in our brains.

The role dopamine would play in reward sex and food paired is neurobiologically linked, meaning that the stimuli would have to directly affect our bodies. For example drugs are most commonly linked with dopamine because we ingest drugs, metabolize them, and thus feel the reward response in our brains. This is similar to food, because we ingest food and the physical act of eating (taste buds/chewing) is pleasurable to the human brain.

Seeing a stimuli in these cases is not enough to significantly affect our dopaminergic pathways. A sexual image does grab our attention, but it is not enough to reward our brains in the way a physical act of passion would.

I hope this helped. Thank your for taking time to read, and I wish you all the best. I always neuro based discussions. You can follow me on twitter @ktorres.

But what about that food and sex both reward the dopamine pathway? Or here’s a theory…hedonic hot spots. http://nro.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/12/6/500

Perhaps sex works in the burger ad because the visual stimuli of the swimsuit clad Paris Hilton, helps to get the juices flowing along the same pathways that would make us hungry for a condiment packed hamburger?