Nothing (much) To Report

From the truly excellent New Scientist:

Women's orgasms are a turn-off for the brain

For women, it seems, sex is a big turn-off. A scanning study has revealed that many areas of the brain switch off during orgasm - including those involved in emotion.

"At the moment of orgasm, women do not have any emotional feelings," says Gert Holstege of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. His team recruited 13 healthy heterosexual women and their partners. The women were asked to lie with their heads in a PET scanner while the team compared their brain activity in four states: resting, faking an orgasm, having their clitoris stimulated by their partner, and clitoral stimulation to the point of orgasm.

As the women were stimulated, activity rose in one sensory part of the brain but fell in the amygdala and hippocampus, areas involved in alertness and anxiety. During orgasm, activity decreased in many more areas of the brain, Holstege told a meeting of the European Society for Human Reproduction and Embryology in Copenhagen this week. Only one part of the brain, in the cerebellum, was more active in women during orgasm. The cerebellum is generally associated with coordinating movement.

The findings appear to confirm what we already know: that women cannot enjoy sex unless they are relaxed and free from worries and distractions. Looked at from an evolutionary point of view, it could be that the brain switches off the emotions during sex because at such times reproduction and survival of the species become more important than survival of the individual.

The team has already done a similar study with 11 men, which revealed far less deactivation during orgasm than in women. However, Holstege says the results are probably unreliable because PET scanners measure activity over 2 minutes - and in men it's all over in a few seconds.

From issue 2505 of New Scientist magazine, 25 June 2005, page 14

And….

Brain scans find the penis at last

At last we know where the penis is represented in the male brain.

The genitalia's location on the "homunculus", the brain's map of body parts, has been in dispute since the 1920s. Now Christian Kell at the University of Frankfurt in Germany has put eight men into an MRI scanner to help settle the question. Using a soft brush, Kell stroked parts of each volunteer's body while recording brain activity.

Each man's penis was represented in the same place - flanked by the areas for the toes and abdomen - Kell told the Organisation of Human Brain Mapping annual meeting in Toronto. "The only depressing thing," he says, "is that the representation is very small."

From issue 2505 of New Scientist magazine, 25 June 2005, page 22

One day, I'll either figure it out for myself, or I'll pluck up enough courage to ask someone how to categorise my posts on here, and this one is likely to be put under Sex; Science; and possibly Obviously! Oh, and Really Lazy Posts.