ArticleCommunications biology2021
No evidence for prolactin's involvement in the post-ejaculatory refractory period.
Article in Communications biology, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed, 16 citations in OpenAlex.
- A galanin-positive population of lumbar spinal cord neurons modulates sexual arousal and copulatory behavior in male mice.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Slow-Timescale Regulation of Dopamine Release and Mating Drive Over Days.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Neural control of female sexual behaviors.Hormones and behavior · 2023Review
- Exploring differentially expressed genes in hypothalamic, pars tuberalis and pineal gland transcriptomes in different sexual behavior phenotypes in rams using RNA-Seq.Journal of animal science · 2023Article
- Mating-induced prolactin surge is not required for subsequent neurogenesis in male mice.Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2023Article
- Prolactin Action Is Necessary for Parental Behavior in Male Mice.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2022Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
In many species, ejaculation is followed by a state of decreased sexual activity, the post-ejaculatory refractory period. Several lines of evidence have suggested prolactin, a pituitary hormone released around the time of ejaculation in humans and other animals, to be a decisive player in the establishment of the refractory period. However, data supporting this hypothesis is controversial. We took advantage of two different strains of house mouse, a wild derived and a classical laboratory strain that differ substantially in their sexual performance, to investigate prolactin's involvement in sexual activity and the refractory period. First, we show that there is prolactin release during sexual behavior in male mice. Second, using a pharmacological approach, we show that acute manipulations of prolactin levels, either mimicking the natural release during sexual behavior or inhibiting its occurrence, do not affect sexual activity or shorten the refractory period, respectively. Therefore, we show compelling evidence refuting the idea that prolactin released during copulation is involved in the establishment of the refractory period, a long-standing hypothesis in the field of behavioral endocrinology.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.