Journalist Kayt Sukel is helping researchers at Rutgers University unravel some of the mysteries of a human phenomenon that the scientific community knows little about: the org*sm. So, as their guinea pig, she got under the sheets and rubbed one out while researcher Barry Komisaruk took sexy, sexy fMRI scans of her brain. How naughty! Here's what she had to say about the intimate experience for science, via an article in this month's New Scientist (SFW, duh):

Komisaruk instructs me to tap my thumb with my finger for 3 minutes, then to simply imagine my finger tapping my thumb for the next 3 minutes as fMRI tracks where blood is flowing in my brain. Immediately after, I follow the same cycle with Kegel exercises - brief squeezes of the pelvic floor muscles - and then clitoral touches. I'm then asked to self-stimulate to org*sm, raising my free hand to indicate climax. Despite the unique situation, I am able to do so without too much trouble.

 

Over 30 areas of my brain are activated as I move from start to finish, including those involved in touch, memory, reward and even pain (see "Orgasm snapshot"). As Komisaruk expected, the imagined clitoral touches and Kegel exercises activated the same brain areas as real ones, albeit with somewhat less blood flow. The PFC, however, showed more activation when touches and pelvic squeezes were imagined compared with those that were real. He suggests this heightened activation may reflect imagination or fantasy, or perhaps some cognitive process that helps manage so called "top-down" control - the direct regulation by the brain of physiological functions - of our own pleasure. The team presented their results at the Society for Neuroscience annual conference in San Diego in November 2010.

 

Here's an explanation of the snapshot above of Sukel's brain during the moment of org*sm, via the New Scientist:

The scan is a sagittal section, essentially a profile shot, that shows one moment in time in different "slices" through the brain. The coloured dots represent blood flow. Cooler colours show less blood flow and less activation. Warmer colours mean more activation.

You can see from the extent of activity that an org*sm is a whole-brain experience. Activation in the prefrontal cortex (A) is clearly visible, as well as activity in the anterior cingulate cortex (B), thought to be involved in the experience of pain.

Read notes on the study at the New Scientist...

The more you know...