This Is Your Brain on Sex (30 page)

“What does one usually wear for this sort of thing?” I asked.

“I always suggest a loose-fitting dress with no panties. That’s what I wear.” Wise, a former sex therapist turned neuroscience graduate student, always pilots the fMRI studies before other participants are brought in. It was old hat to her. “Something loose and comfortable and easy to get into is best.”

The only dress I packed was meant for your more typical seduction situations, not fMRI scanning. It may provide easy access to my downstairs bits, but the big metal zipper up the side means it is inappropriate for the magnet. “I’m sorry,” I apologized. “I didn’t know. I didn’t think to pack anything like that.”

“That’s fine, that’s fine,” said Wise. “We have access to some hospital johnnies. You can wear one or two of those to cover up.”

The thought of a thin, backless nightgown (or two) initiated a growing feeling of performance anxiety. I couldn’t help thinking of the confined space, limited movement, loud clanking noises, and me in a hospital johnny. Though I am not the type of girl who needs to light candles, don lingerie, and crank up the Barry White in order to satisfy myself, I do need a little bit of mood to get things going. I was beginning to worry. Would I be able to find any inspiration to explore Ladytown in the kind of setup I was facing?

The next morning, when I arrived at Rutgers University’s Smith Hall, a dark 1970s-style building in the middle of the Newark campus, I was in a bit of a panic. Despite spending an hour or two trying to concoct some kind of sexy fantasy about lab coats and confined spaces the previous night, I was still afraid that when push came to shove, I would not be able to reach orgasm.

I recognized Nan Wise immediately; our phone calls had already made her out to be the quintessential mother type, ever ready to nurture and comfort. She wanted to make sure I had eaten a good breakfast, was already asking for my lunch order, and simultaneously
reassured me that the scan would be a piece of cake. We walked upstairs to an older office to prepare for my scanning session later in the day. “O-Team Headquarters” was written in big green letters on a side wall whiteboard. I wondered aloud if the lab had made T-shirts yet. “No, not yet,” said Wise. “But that’s a great idea!”

Waiting for me there was Komisaruk, compact and dapper. His easygoing manner also had a calming effect. Good thing too—the first order of business was to fit me for a head mask, a sort of modern Count of Monte Cristo–type restraint system made of tight plastic mesh. White and blue, the contraption was part low-budget bondage porn prop and part clinical radiation treatment kit. But it was not meant to be pretty. Rather, it was needed to keep my head as still as possible during the scan. Once we started the scan, it would be screwed directly to the scanner bed, meaning that I would be unable to get into or out of the fMRI tube without assistance. As I lay down on a table for my fitting, I tried to casually ask whether any other participants had difficulties reaching orgasm during their studies. I figured a conversation would help distract me from the heated wet plastic he was about to place over my face.

Being fitted for my “sexy” head mask for the fMRI orgasm study.
Photo by the author.

“A few. But not too many.” He pressed the plastic, warm and malleable, across my face and ears, making sure it would harden in an exact contour of my head. “No, we really don’t have too much of that. Maybe two or three tops in all the people we’ve scanned.”

Ah. No pressure then. None at all.

“Are you worried about that?” he asked gently. I squeaked out an affirmation, since nodding would mess up the mold.

“Well, don’t worry about that. We’ll ask you to do some Kegel exercises and then just
think
about doing some Kegel exercises so we can compare the activations in the sensory cortex under the two conditions. Even if there isn’t an orgasm, it will still be very useful to us.”

“You’ll do great,” Wise concurred, as she slipped a bottle of CVS-brand lube into the pocket of her lab coat, a coat with many pockets. I imagined it held any number of items she could pull out to help me relax if needed—some chicken soup, a couple of Dramamine tablets, or perhaps even an fMRI-safe dildo, if that’s what the situation called for. The thought made me laugh a little, but only on the inside. I did not want to have to remold my mask.

Getting to the Big O

A few hours later the party moved to the fMRI suite at the nearby University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey Medical Center. I donned a hospital johnny and was pushed back into the scanner’s tube, as ready as I would ever be to have an orgasm in an fMRI. Almost immediately I heard Komisaruk’s voice through my headset, telling me to lie still so they could perform a ten-minute anatomical, which is a scan that obtains a precise set of “slice” images of my entire brain. These images would form the “screen” onto which they would project the active sites in my brain in order to precisely specify where the activity was occurring. The brain’s relay stations and the pathways connecting them are as complex and exactly laid out as the buildings and roads in a city. So, just as a fire department can locate a fire in a specific building, brain imaging can locate a hot spot of activation in a specific brain structure.

“Just relax, Kayt,” he said. “Go to sleep if you want.”

The magnet started to spin around me. As promised, it was loud. Da dadadadadadadadadada. Click. Aunnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnk. Clank. THUNK! THUNK! THUNK! The sound was not unlike a combination of jackhammers, a few amateur tap dancers, and a test of the emergency broadcast system at top volume all rolled into one. It lasted the majority of my session inside the scanner, which was approximately
an hour and a half. Even with ear protection, I could feel each click, clank, and whir all the way down my spine. The situation was not conducive to sleep, but I tried to will myself into a relaxed state anyway. fMRI is all about staying as still as superhumanly possible, and relaxing does help.

When I first spoke with Wise weeks earlier, she gave me pre-scan homework. “Practice self-stimulating to orgasm as often as you can. And when you do, try to stay as still as possible,” she instructed. “It’s much harder than it sounds. Just the other week I had to hold one woman’s legs down because she was thrashing around so much. I just prayed we’d get some usable data out of it.” The magnet is unable to accurately track blood flow if there’s too much movement; you would not know if a result was due to the stimulus (that is, the self-stimulation) or just extra noise from the movement. Given that an individual fMRI scan costs thousands of dollars, that noise-inducing movement is something researchers hope to avoid. And my at-home practice made it clear that staying as still as possible in this particular scenario wasn’t going to be all that easy.

Just as I was starting to zone out, not into sleep exactly, but into something like it, the noises suddenly stopped. After the ten-minute cacophony, the lack of booming was almost as deafening. I was awake and paying attention now. A few moments later Komisaruk’s smooth voice came through my ear phones again. “Now we’re going to do thirty seconds of Kegel exercises, followed by thirty seconds of rest,” he said. “And we’ll do that a total of five times.”

Kegel exercises, named for their creator and staunch promoter, Alfred Kegel, are simply contractions of the pelvic floor muscles, the same ones you use to start and stop the flow of urine. They are generally recommended for pregnant women and men with prostrate troubles. I know they were a favorite of my German obstetrician. She told me on my first prenatal visit that I should do my Kegels religiously, and concluded her instructions with the line, made all the more emphatic by her strong Teutonic accent, “Do your Kegels every day and keep incontinence at bay!” She didn’t understand why her Ben Franklinesque rhyme cracked me up.

Once the clanking resumed, I started flexing my pelvic muscles. Komisaruk wanted to compare whether actually doingy
Kegels versus just thinking about doing them activated the same brain areas. Some of his previous work suggested that the sensory cortex, at least where the genitals are concerned, could be activated by thought alone. If it held up, it would be a new and exciting result, and one that could potentially inform future treatments for those who cannot have orgasms, maybe even give researchers some new ways to study sexual desire.

My pelvic floor (and Kegel-fueled imagination) amply exercised, it was now time for the big show. Ready or not, I had to woman up and bring myself to orgasm. In a few minutes I would know if loud clanks and clicks, hospital johnnies, and a tight mesh head restraint could make the magic happen. I certainly hoped so. My type A personality meant I was pretty invested in succeeding. I did not want to be one of those few participants who were not able to do it.

“Okay, Kayt. We’re going to take a three-minute rest and then get right to self-stimulating to orgasm,” Komisaruk’s disembodied voice came through loud and clear. “Can we get you some lube?”

I was going to need all the help I could get. Lube certainly couldn’t hurt. “Yes, please,” I replied. When I heard Wise enter the room, I reached my hand up and felt the lubricant, cool and slick, pool into the palm of my hand. I tried not to dribble any onto the floor before putting my hand back down beneath the blanket and hospital johnny to wait for the magnet to start back up again.

Da dadadadadadadadadada. Click. Aunnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnk. THUNK! I was instructed to spend the next three minutes relaxing and thinking of nothing. Instead I spent it stewing on my performance anxiety, giving myself a pep talk. I can give myself an orgasm under these circumstances. I think I can. I think I can. I think I’ll come. I could do it, darn it. I would.

“Self-stimulate to orgasm starting now.”

Hearing my cue, I took a deep breath and got to it. It may not have been romantic or sexy in there and, man, this mask thing was starting to get
really
uncomfortable, but I was going to orgasm no matter what. Focusing all my concentration, I powered through it, keeping my head as still as possible. A few minutes later I raised my hand to let Komisaruk know my orgasm had begun.
I wouldn’t say it was one of my best, but, hey, in my humble opinion, it still qualified. Sadly, the orgasm rated higher than a few I’d had during sex with one or two of my old boyfriends. I lowered my hand to signal my finish and, with it, let out a long breath of relief. If I could have reached around to pat myself on the back, heck, to pat myself anywhere except on my clitoris, I would have done so.

“Thanks, Kayt,” Komisaruk said. “Please rest.”

I did it. I now had a great story if anyone ever asked me to name the strangest place I’ve ever had an orgasm. And I had helped science while doing it. Triumph for all parties concerned!

After a few minutes Komisaruk’s dulcet tones flowed across my headset once more. “Uh, Kayt, would it be possible to try to self-stimulate to orgasm again?” he asked tentatively.

“Again?” I asked with some confusion. Was there a glitch in the magnet? Did I do something wrong? Was my orgasm not orgasm-y enough for the O-Team?

“Well, the orgasm was a little short-lasting,” he explained. “Would it be possible to do it again?”

Crap. All mental back-patting ended right there. I had managed to get ’er done, but my orgasm was not up to snuff. So much for my grand contribution to science. There was no way around it—I had to give it another go. “Sure thing. I can do it again,” I said. This silly orgasm was becoming my albatross, my white whale. But I couldn’t allow it to be. I was going to kick its butt this time around. Not only was I going to make it happen, I was going to find a way to
enjoy
it, damn it.

“Great, thanks,” Komisaruk said. “Do you need some more lube?”

“No, thanks, I’m okay,” I replied. Stopping and waiting for lube would only distract me. I needed to get this done
now
. You know, before I completely lost my nerve.

With the magnet whirring back to life with a clank and a bang, I took a deep breath and reached back down under the blankets. Short latency or not, my previous efforts made the process easier this time around. As strange as it may sound, I relaxed into my work and started to enjoy myself a bit. Maybe a little more than that. When I heard myself audibly moan, I hesitated, wondering if they could
hear me in the control room. I shook off the notion and pushed on. By the time I heard myself moan again, I didn’t care if anyone could hear me or not. I was in the moment—I was going to get there again. And this time I was going to get there with some style. I raised my hand to signal orgasm onset and then I rode the wave on home.

“Kayt, that was wonderful. Great length and latency,” Komisaruk told me. “It was really, really great.”

Feeling cheeky, I replied, “It wasn’t bad for me either.” I heard laughter erupt in the background. I tried not to think about what else they might have heard just a few moments earlier.

After being instructed to relax for the next ten minutes as the researchers finished up my scan, I closed my eyes and did exactly that. This time, despite the noise, I managed to catch a few Z’s. It would seem an orgasm is an orgasm is an orgasm for me too.