Abstract
FEMALE cats in spontaneous or induced œstrus display a characteristic behaviour which may be divided into: (1) courtship activities (playful rolling, rubbing, calling, crouching with pelvis raised, and ‘treading'), and (2) the after-reaction (vigorous or frantic rolling, rubbing, squirming, and lieking).1 Bard1 has shown that extirpation of the neocortex does not change the specific pattern of the sexual response. It was my aim to determine if this peculiar performance of the female cat during ‘heat’ is conditioned by the activity of an encephalic ‘sexual centre’ or if some typical components of the complex behaviour could still be elicited from the spinal cord after transection of the brain stem below the medulla.
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References
Bard, Ph., Psych. Rev., 41, 424, (1934); Amer. J. Physiol, 116, 4, (1936).
Dempsey, E. W., and Rioch, D. MeK., J. Neurophysiol., 2, 9, (1939).
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MAES, J. Neural Mechanism of Sexual Behaviour in the Female Cat. Nature 144, 598–599 (1939). https://doi.org/10.1038/144598a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/144598a0
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