Orgasms are a mysterious thing. Some people struggle to have one at all, while others can bring themselves to climax just by thinking about it. The famous sex researcher Dr. Alfred Kinsey once said that an orgasm ‘can be likened to the crescendo, climax, and sudden stillness achieved by an orchestra of human emotions … an explosion of tensions, and to sneezing.’ The weirdest thing about orgasms is that they don’t just related to your sexual health or physical wellbeing, but also your mental wellness. As Ruth Westheimer, a sex therapist and author best known as Dr. Ruth, famously put it, ‘the most important sex organ lies between the ears.’ So what exactly goes on in your brain during an orgasm?
According to health and wellness expert Shanna Freeman, former Senior Editor at HowStuffWorks, ‘Without nerves sending impulses back to the spinal cord and brain, an orgasm wouldn’t be possible. Just like any other area of the body, the genitalia contain different nerves that send information to the brain to tell it about the sensation that’s being experienced. This helps to explain why the sensations are perceived differently depending on where someone is being touched. A clitoral orgasm, for example, differs from a vaginal orgasm because different sets of nerves are involved.’ There is a huge number of nerve endings in your genitals, but what do they all do?
1. Hypogastric nerve: This nerve transmits from the uterus and the cervix in women and from the prostate in men.
2. Pelvic nerve: While this nerve transmits from the rectum in both sexes, women also have the pelvic nerve in their vagina and cervix.
3. Pudendal nerve: If you’re a woman, this nerve transmits from your clitoris, and if you’re a man, it transmits from your scrotum and penis in men.
4. Vagus nerve: This nerve is just for women, transmitting from your cervix, uterus and vagina. However, the role of the vagus nerve is a new discovery, and there’s much we still don’t know about it.
Freeman explains, ‘Since most of those nerves are associated with the spinal cord, it would stand to reason that a person with a severed spinal cord wouldn’t be able to have an orgasm. And for a very long time, that’s what people with these types of injuries were told. However, recent studies show that people with spinal cord injuries – even paraplegics – can reach orgasm…Because the vagus bypasses the spinal cord, women [are] still able to feel cervical stimulation.’ However, your orgasm brain activity isn’t just about nerve endings, you also have a pleasure centre in your brain which lets you know when something is enjoyable and reinforces the desire for you to perform the same pleasurable action again. Also known as the reward circuit, the pleasure centre includes every pleasurable action from sex to laughter to certain types of drug use. Some of the brain areas impacted by pleasure include:
- Amygdala: This area regulates your emotions.
- Nucleus accumbens and VTA: The former area controls your release of dopamine, while the ventral tegmental area (VTA) actually releases the dopamine.
- Cerebellum. This area controls your muscle function.
- Pituitary gland. This area releases beta-endorphins, which decrease your pain; oxytocin, which increases your feelings of trust; and vasopressin, which increases bonding.
Until the late 1990s and the mid-2000s, not much was known about how the pleasure centre of your brain works during sex. However, a team of researchers at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands conducted several studies of both men and women, finding that there aren’t too many differences between men’s and women’s brains when it comes to sex. In both sexes, the brain region behind the left eye, called the lateral orbitofrontal cortex, shut down during orgasm. Study researcher Janniko R. Georgiadis commented, ‘It’s the seat of reason and behavioural control. But when you have an orgasm, you lose control.’ Dr. Gert Holstege added that ‘95%’ of the brain looks the same during orgasm as it would if you were to take heroin.
