This Is Your Brain on Sex (29 page)

That’s right—orgasm is possible with no downstairs action involved. Everyone knows about nocturnal emissions. Wet dreams are among the first topics discussed in sexual education class at school, if your grade school is progressive enough to offer it. These nighttime emissions would be easy to chalk up to reflex, perhaps, or to some kind of developmental quirk. But orgasms during
sleep are well-documented across both genders and at a wide range of ages.

I have some personal experience with this. During my pregnancy I had crazy sex dreams. Vivid, bright, and kind of wacky—one of the handful I remember involved clowns and water guns, and I will leave it at that—these dreams usually brought me to an orgasm intense enough to wake me from my sexcapade slumber. My pregnancy books told me this was perfectly normal. In fact research studies have shown that even women without buns in the oven are able to dream their way into the big O, showing increased heart rate, respiration, and vaginal blood flow during the experience. Though this is not a reflexive response, there was stimulation involved. But that stimulation came only from the brain.

It happens not only in dreams. Some individuals with spinal cord injury can still have orgasms despite the fact they have no feeling below the waist. Some epileptics have orgasms as a by-product of their seizures. There have been several cases of brain-damaged individuals who can have orgasms from a veritable cornucopia of nongenital stimulation (nose vibrations, anyone?). You can stimulate the brain chemically and electrically to get off. There are so many ways to bypass the genitals completely and get yourself to that so-called little death. Sure, the penis and vagina are nice accessories to have around. They’re just not necessary.

There are even folks who are able to “think off,” to just think of something—sometimes things that aren’t even all that sexy—to reach orgasm. It sounds unlikely, almost a joke, perhaps a person doing their best
When Harry Met Sally
delicatessen impression. But it is true. I don’t know about you, but if I could manage it, I would be hard-pressed to find good reasons to leave the house.

One friend, who would like me to call her Trixie in these pages, is one so blessed. She says “thinking off” is not that explicit, or even that exciting. She often gets through boring conference calls at work by doing it in her office, and no one is ever the wiser. Though it stretched the limits of our friendship a bit, I asked if she might demonstrate. After a couple of margaritas, she agreed.

I expected something fairly grand: a show reminiscent of Sally Albright in all her faking orgasmic glory, maybe with a few hip gyrations and screams thrown in for good measure. It wasn’t anything that dramatic. Trixie simply sat back on the couch, closed
her eyes, and grew very quiet. I tried not to watch too intently, but there was obviously very little movement. After a few minutes (and a false start or two, when she opened her eyes to see how closely I was monitoring and started to giggle) the only noticeable changes were heavier breathing and clenched hands. For several minutes that was all she wrote. To tell the truth, I was getting a little bored. I would not even have known ecstasy was upon Trixie except that she groaned once, startled me a bit, and then slowly, purposely expelled her breath and relaxed her hands. Now finished, she opened her eyes and sheepishly asked for another margarita.

“That was it?” I asked incredulously. “That was an orgasm?” I worried that my prying eyes had intimidated her a little bit and taken her off-task, so to speak.

“I told you there wasn’t much to it,” she said, face flushed and a bit embarrassed. “That’s it.”

“What were you thinking about?” I asked.

She blushed, deepening the already present flush on her cheeks to a Technicolor rose. “Johnny Depp, actually.”

“Just Johnny Depp?” I prodded.

“Well, Johnny Depp doing stuff to me. Do I have to be more explicit than that?”

It was not hard to extrapolate from there. But I had to ask just one more thing. Hoping I wasn’t going too far, I pressed on. “How does it compare to an orgasm you have masturbating? Or, you know, with a guy?”

“Well, an orgasm is an orgasm,” Trixie replied. “It feels good no matter how you get there. But I’d much rather be with a partner.” She shrugged. “I just think of this as a more efficient, less messy method of masturbation.”

That makes sense. Most of us appreciate a little self-stimulation now and again, whether clitoral, penile, or mental, even though we would prefer to be having sex with someone else. Imagine if you didn’t even have to get your hands dirty. Could Trixie’s think-off orgasm be the same as one provided by some good old-fashioned masturbation? Neuroimaging studies suggest so; an orgasm lights up the same brain areas no matter how you happen to get there.

Komisaruk and Whipple
have found several key brain areas that are active during an orgasm in women: the hypothalamus, amygdala, hippocampus, anterior cingulate cortex, insular cortex, nucleus accumbens, cerebellum, and sensory cortex. Their work has also shown prefrontal cortex activation, while other research done by a group in the Netherlands suggests that an orgasm may actually turn off this part of the brain involved in decision making and executive function.
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(This is probably due to methodology differences. While Komisaruk’s group uses fMRI to study blood flow changes, the Netherlanders use positron emission tomography. The measurements can be a bit slower in this method. Perhaps more important, in the Dutch studies participants were stimulated by a partner. It may be that the frontal cortex activation has something to do with coordinating movement during self-stimulation. No one can say for sure.)

An area of particular interest to researchers has been a part of the anterior hypothalamus called the paraventricular nucleus that produces and secretes oxytocin into the bloodstream, brain, and spinal cord after orgasm. Those secretions, activating many oxytocin receptors in the reward centers and resulting in a massive release of dopamine, may have something to do with why orgasm feels so damn good. These areas are charged whether you are masturbating, have a partner help you with some manual stimulation, or are “thinking off.” As Trixie says, it would seem an orgasm is an orgasm is an orgasm, no matter how you play it.
³

What about brain activation in men? When I told my friend Sarah that I was doing research into this particular phenomenon, she kidded, “Is there anything to study? One might hypothesize the male brain completely dematerializes during ejaculation.” Though I am sure there are many women who would raise a sound “Hear, hear!” in response to that (and perhaps a few men would shrug in reluctant agreement), several studies looking at cerebral blood flow in men during arousal and orgasm have found that there is something going on in the brain.

A group at Stanford University compared brain activation and penile turgidity (that’s fancy talk for erection) in healthy heterosexual males while they were viewing videos of sports, erotic material, or relaxing scenes. I can only imagine the posters used to recruit participants, maybe something like “Do you like sports? Do you like porn? Would you like a picture of your
brain?” Somehow I don’t think they had a hard time finding young men interested in participating in this study. However they got participants into the magnet, the researchers found strong activation, correlated with a good erection, in the claustrum, the left side of the basal ganglia that includes the caudate and putamen, the hypothalamus, areas in the middle occipital and temporal gyri, the cingulate cortex, and sensorimotor regions when the men were viewing the erotic videos. Hypothalamus and basal ganglia activation has been implicated in sexual arousal and erection. That these areas, which are involved in oxytocin and dopamine, saw more blood flow was not much of a surprise. The other activations required a little bit of explanation. The claustrum activation coupled with the occipital and temporal areas suggests that participants were both recognizing (and perhaps facilitating) their erections as well as mentally translating whatever was happening on screen in the erotic video to something that might happen to them personally. That, however, is where the results stop. The group did not continue the measurements to orgasm. Perhaps the researchers couldn’t find anyone to clean up the fMRI once the participants were finished. And, sadly, there were no mentions of cerebral blood flow results (or erections) during the sports videos.
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Janniko Georgiadis, a leading Dutch researcher interested in orgasm, used positron emission tomography to study brain activation during actual ejaculation. He and his colleagues measured cerebral blood flow while each participant was stimulated to orgasm by a partner. The group found activations deep in the cerebellum, anterior vermis, pons, and ventrolateral thalamus, which are all areas located near the brain stem and implicated in movement. They argued that previous findings of basal ganglia and neocortex activation were signs of arousal as opposed to orgasm itself. Thus the cerebellum and related blood flow can be attributed to the muscle contractions linked to the physical act of ejaculation. Their most important finding, they argued, was the ejaculation-related deactivation across the prefrontal cortex. Perhaps Sarah’s idea that the male brain, at least the prefrontal level, dematerializes during orgasm was not so far off the mark.
⁵

In a more recent study Georgiadis and his colleagues compared orgasm-related cerebral blood flow in both men and women. The group concluded that the two sexes differed
in activation during genital stimulation, but not in orgasm. Given the differences in basic anatomical equipment, this finding is not exactly a big surprise. One usually handles a penis a little differently from a clitoris—one would hope so, at least. Despite these differences observed in stimulation, there was quite a bit of overlap in activation between the two groups during the big O. Once again the group reported a lack of activation in the prefrontal cortex, in both men and women.
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Even with their differences, these studies have demonstrated that orgasm has a distinct brain signature. Do some of these areas seem familiar? You’ve seen the hypothalamus and basal ganglia also appear in neuroimaging studies of romantic love. As Helen Fisher said, it is like a kaleidoscope: the pattern can change depending on the circumstances. Once again the brain proves itself to be, as my professor put it, the ultimate recycler. No redundancies here.

So What?

As Stephanie Ortigue said, knowing what lights up in a brain during arousal and orgasm can tell us only so much. Komisaruk and his colleagues would like to take things a step further. fMRI has evolved since their initial work in this area. Like a time-lapse camera, new paradigms can follow the brain activation as the orgasm happens so that the researchers can map its path in real time. But the brain moves fast, perhaps even faster than current technology can measure. Nonetheless, Komisaruk aims to get a better idea of how these brain areas interact during orgasm by studying the order of their activation. “We want to see if there’s some kind of pattern,” he told me. “Orgasm is a perfect case study for seeing how activity can build up in a crescendo and lead to a climax, a release in the brain. We can apply a constant, continuous stimulation and hopefully see, minute by minute, as different brain regions are recruited into activation.”

Where does the orgasm begin, continue, and end? Komisaruk guesses the pattern of activation starts in the sensory cortex, an area called the paracentral lobule, where the brain registers and processes the genitals’ response to stimulation; moves to the PVN, which releases all that good oxytocin; and
ends at the nucleus accumbens and its subsequent dopamine rush. Whether this is the way it works in all cases requires further confirmation.

Hoping to figure out the exact map of activation, Komisaruk and his colleagues scanned a few folks and compiled their initial findings for a presentation poster at one of the biggest neuroscience conferences in the world, sponsored by the Society for Neuroscience. To prepare for this event they quickly gathered participants to create a movie documenting this real-time activation. I volunteered my brain—as well as my naughty bits—to be a part of it.

Performance Anxiety, fMRI style

If you ever want to make even the most cosmopolitan of your friends speechless, telling them you have volunteered to travel to Newark, New Jersey, so you can masturbate to orgasm in an fMRI is a great way to start. Once they overcome the shock, chances are they will start to ask questions.
A lot
of questions. Most I was able to answer. To start, no, I’m not kidding, I’m really going to do it. Really, it is not a joke, I promise. Yes, I will be in the scanner, the same sort of claustrophobic tube you got your knee scanned in that one time. Yes, I know it is a very tight fit. Loud too. Yes, I’ll be self-stimulating. How? Clitorally, to be exact, until I reach orgasm. Will I use a vibrator? No, most vibrators have metal, which is a no-no in the magnet. I’ll have to rely on my own hands to get the job done. Yes, technically people will be watching—just the scientists who are running the study, I think. But I will be draped for modesty and the only thing they will really be observing, besides my brain on the computer screen, is my hand to signal when ecstasy is upon me. Both Komisaruk and his colleague, Nan Wise, have explained the whole process in detail to me. No, I am not sure I’ll actually be able to do it. But, as instructed, I have been practicing at home and will give it my best shot. It seemed that I was going through the same spiel over and over again. Between Wise’s careful instructions and my repeated parroting, I felt I knew the procedure backward and forward. Or so I thought.

It occurred to me only the night before I was due to be scanned that I had forgotten to ask the most important question of all: What do I wear to this session? Neither Emily Post nor my most
recent issue of
Cosmo
could tell me the proper dress code for self-stimulating to orgasm in an fMRI scanner. And my previous experience in other neuroimaging studies was no help. I had automatically packed some yoga pants and a tank top, thinking of comfort in a confined space, not ease of access to my nether regions. Panicked, I picked up the phone to call Wise.