So apparently, everyone is getting all hot n bothered over the fact that, at SfN, they are going to do a video of women stimulating themselves to orgasm…in an fMRI. Of their BRAINS, obviously. Please, this conference is not NSFW! 🙂
Sci is very excited to see the videos (heh, heh…) but moreso to see the results, because from the press release (which is all I’ve got to go on right now), it looks like they are looking at the possible effects of combating pain. Well, ok, maybe. Really, the press release doesn’t give me a lot to go on.
But anyway, everyone’s going all nuts because there’s going to be video. But it turns out that the people in charge of this study (main author is Komisaruk) have DONE THIS BEFORE! Just without video. And what better way to herald the approach of their new study (and the subject of this month’s Carnal Carnival!) than to cover his previous work!
LET’S GET IT ON.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKPoHgKcqag
Komisaruk et al. “Brain activation during vaginocervical self-stimulation and orgasm in women with complete spinal cord injury: fMRI evidence of mediation by the vagus nerves”. Brain Research, 2004.
Now, much as you might think, this study wasn’t just for giggles, it was actually a study on how the brain senses things like orgasm and vaginal stimulation following injury. They took women who were injured at spinal cord T10 and above for this study. T10 is here:
(Via wikipedia)
To put that in situ:
(Via wikipedia, start at the top of the thoracic vertebrae and count down 10)
So it’s a spine injury at about chest level (Correct thanks to Jim in the comments, it’s about the bellybutton, nipple level is apparently T4). People with this injury suffer from partial or total paralysis of the legs and lower torso, but the chest and everything upward is unaffected, so breathing is fine, and they have normal upper body strength, and can get into and out of a car, drive (with hand controls), etc.
Severing above T10 ALSO means that the spinal cord is severed ABOVE the point where the genital sensory nerves come out. So in theory, this means that women with this spinal cord injury should not be able to feel anything…down there. But they CAN. In fact, they can perceive and orgasm in response to vaginal stimulation. This means that whatever nerves are carrying the sensations they are perceiving is bypassing the spinal cord entirely. A good candidate for this is the vagus nerve.
The vagus nerve, or cranial nerve ten, enervates a very large amount of your body cavity, and it also carries a TON of sensory information back to the brain. The authors of this study hypothesized that the vagus was making up for the lack of genital sensory nerves, and allowing women with spinal cord injury to perceive vagina stimulation.
But how are you going to know this? Well, stimulate the women, put them in an fMRI, and see where the stimulation is going. The vagus nerve projects to areas of the brain like the nucleus of the solitary tract, the posterior motor nucleus of vagus, and the nucleus ambiguus (which is my favorite nucleus for ambiguous reasons).
So, they put these women in an fMRI, and first checked them for vagus nerve activity. In this case they used a taste stimulus which is known to activate the vagus. Here’s the result:
And then they looked at cervical self-stimulation (fancy term for masturbation, I’m sure you get the idea).
Funny, those two look similar…
AH HA!
All of the women showed activation of the nucleus of the solitary tract during self-stimulation. And the stimulation of the solitary nucleus in both cases of taste sensation and self-stimulation suggests that the vagus nerve is involved.
What the authors ALSO noted was that all the women tested showed decrease in PAIN SENSITIVITY during cervical self-stimulation. I think this is what they may be following up on, and it sounds like it could be an interesting avenue of treatment for pain. NO, not giving women orgasms, that would probably be too distracting. 🙂 But proper stimulus of the vagus nerve (possibly more sensitive than what we have now) could maybe be pursued.
Anyway, it turns out that three of the women tested were able to achieve orgasm via cervical self-stimulation in the fMRI. And what the authors saw was a gradual and HUGE recruitment of structures all over the brain, til the whole thing goes off like fireworks at orgasm.
The first areas to be activated included the amygdala (related to emotional processing), the basal ganglia and insula (related to reward and pleasure and motor activity), and at orgasm, the nucleus accumbens, hypothalamus, and hippocampus joined in the fun.
The whole study shows not only THAT women with spinal cord injury above T10 can experience stimulation and orgasm, but it gives a good insight into HOW it’s happening. And it’s just another cool way in which our bodies can find a workaround.
Sadly, I won’t be at the Society for Neuroscience meeting to see the airing of the video, but I look forward to seeing it soon! I’m predicting some colorful fireworks. 🙂
Komisaruk BR, Whipple B, Crawford A, Liu WC, Kalnin A, & Mosier K (2004). Brain activation during vaginocervical self-stimulation and orgasm in women with complete spinal cord injury: fMRI evidence of mediation by the vagus nerves. Brain research, 1024 (1-2), 77-88 PMID: 15451368
