I always wondered where men’s sexual drive and financial acumen was located.

Now I know, as a result of a new study involving some 15 heterosexual young men at Stanford University. 

I always thought it was a lot lower in the male anatomy, but it’s actually located in the sex and money hub, the V-shaped nucleus accumbens, which sits near the base of the brain and plays a central role in what man experiences as pleasure, or in this case taking a risk with his money.

You see they did this study showing young men erotic pictures and when they saw them they were more likely to make a larger financial gamble than if they were shown a picture of something scary, such as a snake, or something neutral, such as a stapler.

I don’t know who it is that comes up with these studies, but I want to tell you, I’m not going anywhere when I see an erotic picture, but when I see a snake I’m going to take off in my New Balance running shoes, or, look for a machete.

In either case I’m not going to take more risk with my money.

But apparently the arousing pictures in this study lit up the same part of the brain that lights up when financial risks are taken.

“You have a need in an evolutionary sense for both money and women. They trigger the same brain area,” said Camelia Kuhnen, a Northwestern University finance professor who conducted the study with a Stanford University psychologist.

And all this time I thought it was Viagra that made these sexual and financial decisions for me?

They say in this study that when that hub, the nucleus accumbens, is activated by erotic images, the men were far more likely to bet high on a random chance game that would earn them either a dollar or a dime.  Each man made more than 50 gambles under brain scans.

Now when I delved further into this study I found that it didn’t matter if the sexy woman didn’t tell me anything about the odds of winning a roulette game, what mattered is that the sexy woman is having an emotional impact.  And this emotional impact bleeds over into my financial decisions.

So that is why I bought those high end sexually attactive cars while that erotic woman was standing alongside?

They say in the study there is something going on between the power of emotion and arousal and financial decisions.

Furthermore they say the link between sex and greed goes back hundreds of thousands of years, to men’s evolutionary role as provider or resource gatherer to attract women.

Harvard economist Terry Burnham, author of the book, “Mean Genes.” says this all makes sense.  He says it’s like the line from the movie “Sacarface.”

“In this country, you gotta make the money first. Then when you get the money, you get the power. Then when you get the power, then you get the women.”

And so this study seems to come at a most appropriate time.

I now better understand former Governor Eliot Spitzer’s actions with a hooker and his successor, David Paterson, admitting to multiple affairs.  It seems to have something to due with the nucleus accumbens.

Now this same condition has affected presidents as well, after all it was not that long ago that President Bill Clinton risked all with his affair with Monica Lewinsky.  He left the White House $12 million in debt and seven years later he reported income of $109 million.

This study should be a wake up call for Sen. Hillary Clinton, presidential candidate, for after all she, better than most knows of her husbands track record, and now with all that money in the Clinton’s coffers she had best limit the number of erotic images that come before Bill, for after all she may not make it back into the White House.