oxytocin and erections

You all love oxytocin, whether you know it or not - it's the glue of animal of human social and pair bonding. As part of the amusing abstract series, I like this paper out in last month, suggesting that oxytocin in humans would be a fantastic replacement for viagra. And that those lame, placebo-pushing human oxytocin companies should think about developing needles into the nucleus accumens, instead of cologne (their claims are lies, damned funny lies, given the dosage and method of oxytocin administration). Here's a bit of the abstract:

Oxytocin injected into the ventral tegmental area induces penile erection and increases extracellular dopamine in the nucleus accumbens and paraventricular nucleus of the hypothalamus of male rats

The neuropeptide oxytocin (20–100 ng), induces penile erection when injected unilaterally into the caudal but not rostral mesencephalic ventral tegmental area (VTA) of male Sprague–Dawley rats. Such pro-erectile effect started 30 min after treatment...

...suggesting that oxytocin effects are mediated by the activation of mesolimbic dopaminergic neurons, followed in turn by that of incerto-hypothalamic dopaminergic neurons impinging on oxytocinergic neurons mediating penile erection. As the stimulation of paraventricular dopamine receptors not only induces penile erection, but also increases mesolimbic dopamine neurotransmission by activating oxytocinergic neurons, these results provide further support for the existence of a neural circuit in which dopamine and oxytocin influence both the consummatory and motivational/rewarding aspects of sexual behaviour.