Sexual Incentive Motivation

Motivation can be described as the processes that activate, direct, and determine the persistence of goal-directed behavior. A certain level of sexual motivation is required to activate approach behavior which could potentially lead to copulation and reproduction. Here, we discuss the use of the sexual incentive motivation test to assess the magnitude of sexual motivation in rodents in response to different incentive stimuli. Our goal is to provide the reader with guidelines on how to set up the test and what measures can be considered to study sexual incentive motivation.