Orgasm is literally a mind-blowing experience for a woman, scientists revealed on Monday.
Much of her brain shuts down when she reaches a sexual climax, including areas that deal with emotion.
The
discovery was made during a bizarre set of experiments in the
Netherlands in which couples were asked to stimulate each other while
undergoing brain scans.
It seems to explode the myth that while men switch off during sex, the part of women that is most turned on is in their heads.
By looking at the brain scans, researchers had no trouble telling when women were "faking it".
The
brains of volunteers who were asked to simulate orgasm after a period
of stimulation remained fully active and in conscious control.
Neuroscientist
Dr Gert Holstege, from the University of Groningen, who led the
research, said: "The main thing we saw in females is deactivation of
the brain, which was unbelievable; really very pronounced.
"I
think that's the major outcome of the study. What you see is
deactivation of large parts of the brain, especially the emotional
brain, the fear centres."
The only part of a woman's brain that
was activated during orgasm was the cerebellum. Although chiefly
associated with the control of movement, scientists think it may also
play an emotional role.
The cerebellum was also active during fake orgasms, but elsewhere the picture was very different.
"If
you look at the women who faked orgasm, we see the same kind of thing
in the cerebellum taking place, but the cortex, the conscious part of
the brain, is also active," said Dr Holstege.
"Women can imitate orgasm quite well, but in the brain it's not the same."
Even
the body movements made during a real orgasm were unconscious and did
not involve the "thinking" part of the brain, hesaid. This was not the
case with a fake orgasm.
Shutting down the brain during orgasm ensured that obstacles such as fear and stress did not get in the way.
"Deactivation
of these very important parts of the brain might be the most important
necessity for having an orgasm," said Dr Holstege.
"When you are
fearful or have a very high level of anxiety, then it's hard to have
sex because during sex you really have to give yourself and let go."
Men
were studied in the same way. But because the male orgasm during
ejaculation takes such a short time - typically 20 seconds - it was
difficult to obtain meaningful brain scan data.
The scans showed
a similar activation of the cerebellum in men. Dr Holstege suspected
other parts of men's brains mirrored those of women and became
deactivated during orgasm.
However, another part of the study in
which couples stimulated each other for two minutes without reaching
orgasm showed distinct differences between men and women.
In
both, a "fear centre" called the amygdala was deactivated. But in men
alone, the scientists saw activation of an ancient, primitive part of
the brain linked to emotion called the insula.
There was also a
difference in the way touching the genitals affected the somatosensory
cortex of the brain. Women merely experienced a sensory feeling,
whereas in men emotions were involved.
"Men are seeing it as a
big deal, the interpretation of what is happening is important to
them," said Dr Holstege. "Women apparently do not have this idea that,
OK, this is so important. With women the primary feeling is there, but
not the interpretation."
Another odd observation was that the
hippocampus, which deals with memory, was deactivated in women. The
researchers have no idea why.
A total of 13 women and 11 men, ranging in age from 19 to 49, took part in the experiments at Dr Holstege's laboratory.
Presenting
the findings today at the annual meeting of the European Society of
Human Reproduction and Embryology in Copenhagen, Denmark, he admitted
it was a not the easiest of studies to carry out.
The volunteers, all partners, were recruited through advertisements placed in Dutch magazines.
To
put participants in the right mood, members of Dr Holstege's team spoke
reassuringly to them, and dimmed the lighting in the scanning room.
Since
it was vital to remain completely still in the scanner, volunteers had
to have their heads restrained while being sexually stimulated. The
rest of the body was free to move.
"We are neuroscientists, so we're only interested in the brain," said Dr Holstege.
The
men and women, who were all heterosexual and right-handed, stimulated
each others' genitals, but did not have full intercourse.
Participants
lay naked on a table with their head inside the scanner. Dr Holstege
said a major problem was that they got cold feet - literally. A
solution was found in the form of socks supplied by the scientists.
Dr Holstege added that the research could in future lead to better treatments for sexual dysfunction.
The key appeared to be to reduce fear and anxiety - as was illustrated by the aphrodisiac effect on alcohol.
"Alcohol brings down the fear level," said Dr Holstege. "Everyone knows if you give alcohol to a woman it makes things easier."
College-Type Hazing Interrogations Get Rougher, As Medical Doctors Join Interrogators.
Were Some Doctors Bad Apples Too, or Just Caught-up In Systemic Abuses
Last summer, an article in the Lancet charged that doctors at Abu Ghraib
knew about the abuse that was going on, and aided the process by not
providing adequate care, and by helping to design physically and
psychologically coercive interrogations. They also helped cover it up
by falsifying medical records and death certificates.That aspect of the
scandal is rarely mentioned, because it doesn't fit in the bad apple
container.
At about the same time, the Washington Post
reported that doctors at Guantanamo were sharing prisoners' medical
records with interrogators. The Red Cross had complained that the
information was used to develop interrogation plans. Maj. Gen. Geoffrey
Miller, who commanded the prison at the time of the complaints, denied
the allegations.
Next month, an article will be published in the New England Journal of Medicine charging that doctors and mental health professionals didn't just hand over the records, they used the information to help interrogators develop methods of interrogation:
All of the evidence is fitting together into a pattern:
in a systemic fashion, health information and clinical judgment played
a role in developing interrogation strategies that included some pretty
harsh abuses," Mr. Bloche said.
According to the NEJM, there is a standing order,
dated August, 2002, and signed by Richard A. Huck, at that time Chief
of Staff of the U.S. Southern Command, which says that there is no medical confidentiality for
prisoners. The DOD memo requires medical personnel not only to hand
over prisoners' medical information on request, but to volunteer any
information that they think might be useful. The NEJM piece discusses
how this policy differs from that in American prisons, and how it
contradicts the laws of war:
Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions provides
that medical personnel âshall not be compelled to perform acts or to
carry out work contrary to the rules of medical ethics.â
Although the protocol has not been ratified by the United States,
this principle has attained the status of customary international law.
International human rights law (most important, the 1966
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights) provides
additional protection for privacy in general â in wartime and
peacetime. Although this protection isnât absolute, exceptions
must be justified by pressing public need, and they must represent
the least restrictive way to meet this need. Wholesale abandonment of
medical confidentiality hardly qualifies, especially when the âneedâ
invoked is the crafting of counter-resistance measures that are
prohibited by international law.
In addition, the New York Times
has interviewed former interrogators who backed up the journal's
charges about the illegal blurring of the lines separating
interrogators from doctors:
The former interrogators said the military doctors'
role was to advise them and their fellow interrogators on ways of
increasing psychological duress on detainees, sometimes by exploiting
their fears, in the hopes of making them more cooperative and willing
to provide information. In one example, interrogators were told that a
detainee's medical files showed he had a severe phobia of the dark and
suggested ways in which that could be manipulated to induce him to
cooperate.
But there's a huge difference in emphasis between the NEJM piece and
the NYT report. The Times focuses on how psychologists and
psychiatrists are working with interrogators, but they fail to even
mention the 2002 memo requiring medical professionals to cooperate.
They only cite a more recent and vague "policy statement" that
"officials said was supposed to ensure that doctors did not participate
in unethical behavior." This is very odd because the NEJM emphasizes
the memo.
The NYT also discusses the Behavioral Science Consultation Teams (or
BSCT, pronounced "biscuit" teams), which advise interrogators on
techniques, or, in the cruder terms of an interrogator interviewed by
the Times, "help us break them." But the Times leaves out an important
bit of information: The teams were created in 2002, and approved by
Major General Geoffrey Miller, who took command of Guantanamo at about
that time, specifically because of the "growing frustration with the
slow pace of intelligence production at Guantanamo."
Overall, the NEJM piece reads as a denunciation of a policy
of making caregivers accessories to intelligence gathering, putting
prisoners at greater risk for abuse. The NYT piece, in contrast, by
focusing on more amorphous ethical debates, and failing to discuss the
role of military officials in crafting this policy, leaves the
impression that the problem is a few caregivers put into a sadly
difficult ethical situation.
Conduct contrary to the laws of war is a bit more serious than a
vague ethical dilemma, but this is so typical of the corporate press,
which, even when it reports on abuses, manages to dance around the
direct responsibility of high level officials for that abuse.
