April 14, 2018 • 37 mins
In this classic episode, Chuck and Josh test the limits of their decorum as they explore the physiology of an orgasm. Learn all about this inexplicably taboo subject (including how even women who are paralyzed can experience orgasms).
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
M Hey everybody, it's me your old friend Josh, And
for this week's s Y s K Selects, I've selected
what happens in the brain during an orgasm. It's a tawdry,
sexy look at things like oxytocin and vassip pressing and
stuff like that. That's pretty good. Actually comes from Christmas
(00:23):
time two thousand eleven, so there's a festive spirit around
it and I hope you enjoy it tremendously. Welcome to
Stuff you Should Know from house Stuff Works dot com. Hey,
(00:43):
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me
as always as Charles W Chuck Bryant. He's got a
new haircut. Everybody looks really good. You can take my
word for short, hind tight, Yeah, high and tight makes
it stuff you should know. Chuck out his ears lowered.
Have you ever heard that? And I don't think anyone
under seventy has ever said that? Though, Yeah, well I
(01:06):
just have. I took the cake. Yes, speaking of have
you ever heard of the origin of the word cakewalk?
The term cakewalk? I wrote a blog on it. You
should check it out. Very surprising, I'll check it out,
very eye opening. Again, tell us just go to the
blog blog. Um, it's so Chuck. Are you ready, Chuck? Yes,
(01:30):
I want to commend you. Okay, Um, just a day
ago I woke up, checked my smartphone and found an
email and you said, how about these first stuff you
should know? And one of them was what happens in
the brain during an orgasm? A week ago? I'm sorry
(01:50):
last week? Yeah, what happens in the brain during an orgasm?
And I thought, oh, man, I don't know about that one. Like,
we've got some younger listeners, are we qualified to talk
about this stuff? I got I started sweating. Um, it
was just it was a wreck. It was a terrible
way to wake up. Um. And I emailed you and
(02:11):
was like are you sure? And you said something that
I thought was this is why I'm commending you. You're like, look, man,
we've done a lot of stuff on like really violent
things which just off the top of my head, shrunken
heads are step by step guide to shrinking heads or
Jack the Cannibalism, Jack the Ripper, um, and we have
we've done a lot of stuff about violent stuff. And
(02:33):
you're like, and I don't want to just be able
to talk about violent stuff but not be able to
talk about sexuality like it's bad or worse than violence.
I don't want to play ball with that scene. And
that is very especially in America. We just celebrated Thanksgiving.
We're a very puritanical country still, and that's absolutely true.
Like violence is celebrated and okay, sexuality is hidden and
(02:56):
it's not okay. Um, and yeah, I don't subject after
that either. So I wanted to commend you for having
that level of foresight insight every kind of site. Thanks
and for um suggesting we do this. Thanks having said that,
if you're a parent, if you're a younger listener, maybe
should ask your parents. We're gonna be very mature about this,
(03:17):
but it's not gonna be funny. But if if you uh,
if you don't think you want your kid listening to
uh anything about orgasms, then switch it off. Hey man,
you're the parent, we're not. It's up to you to
decide when you want your kid. Personally, I went to
sex ed when I was either the fifth or sixth grade,
So I learned about this stuff when I was like
(03:37):
from a teacher. I was like seventh or eight, Really
I was younger. Yeah, yeah, well you're you're very experienced.
I remember one very funny thing that happened. I can't
say it. I wish I could. Oh yeah, yeah, one
kid in my class, I remember his name even It
was he asked a very funny question that he wouldn't
meaning to be funny. And but now that I'm older
looking back, he was asking a legit question and it was.
(04:00):
It was funny. Yeah. Um, that was a great story.
My imagination is running wild right now. All right, let's
get to this, chuck, Yeah, let's this is a really
this is a bang up way to start a podcast.
Like what happens in the brain during an orgasm. Defining
orgasm from the Oxford English Dictionary. It's dry, it's stayed,
(04:24):
it's like clinical, it's perfect. It was perfect. So let's
do that the first one. There a sudden movement, spasm, contraction,
or convulsion, a surge of sexual excitement. That's pretty much
on the on the head there, right, Miriam Webster. Explosive
discharge of neuromuscular tension at the height of sexual arousal,
(04:46):
usually accompanied by the ejaculation of semen in the mail
and by vaginal contractions in the female. And then famous
smut peddler dr Alfred Kinsey. I'm sorry sex researcher. Researcher
l for Kinsey. What was the name of the movie
that Ray Finds played him in? Was it just Kinsey?
It was Kinsey and it was Liam Neeson. Oh yeah, right,
(05:09):
Finds Liam Um he called an orgasm can be likened
to the crescendo or climax and sudden stillness achieved by
an orchestra of human emotions. Also, it could be compared
to an explosion of tensions or to sneezing, which Shane
of Freeman, who wrote this article, took issue with. That's
(05:30):
because it's not true. That's all myth, like if you
sneeze five times, it's like an orgasm, or you'll have
an orgasm. I don't think that's at all what he
was saying. Well, no, but that is an a sense
of tension and then really immediate relief that washes over
your body following like a heavy sneeze. I think that's
what he was saying. Yeah, but there's an urban myth
that if you sneeze like five or seven times in
(05:51):
a row. I don't think Kinsey Dalton urban myths. That
was a scientist and saying since then, so the point
of all this is that the orgasm, wow, it it
is this um sensation that washes over your body. It's
an explosion of tensions. It's like sneezing. Uh. It's accompanied
by ejaculation and men um. There's all these physiological experience
(06:13):
is going on, but all of it is centered in
the brain. The point is the orgasm takes place in
the brain, and thanks to the Wonder Machine, we now
know pretty much what's going on in the brain. We
don't we don't fully understand orgasms, but we have a
much clearer picture than we did even ten years ago,
(06:33):
twenty years ago. Did you ever hear the Billy Connolly,
you know, the comedian his uh, He had one bit
where he talked about when he learned first learning of
an orgasm, when he was like, you know, twelve years old,
like some older friend of his or his brother or
cousin taught him like how to achieve it and what
it was. And he's like, you know, I did it
and it was the best thing ever. And he said,
and then he came back to me the next day
(06:55):
and it was like, you only get one thousand of those.
He was like, the next week, I had used them
all up. Well, I don't know if it was a thousand,
then I don't even know if it's gonna make it
on the air. We'll find out. So let's start clean.
So um, okay, so we have let's let's talk about
where all this starts takes place. Orgasms begin in the
(07:18):
genitalia and they end in the brain, Yeah, pretty much,
that's it. Or they begin in the genitalia, go to
the brain and then come back to the genitalia maybe,
or they begin in the brain and then go to
the genitalia and then back to the brain. We're gonna
get to the bottom of this. But essentially there's a
lot of nerves involved in this, and there's um, you know,
(07:39):
you're not going to be surprised to find that the genitalia,
both male and female, are extremely sensitive nerve wise. Apparently
the clitteress um has about eight thousand nerve endings just
in itself. Uh. Comparatively speaking, the penis, a circumcised penis
is I understand it has about four thousand endings and
(08:00):
the whole thing that glands. Oh really yes, But and
I didn't see this substantiated anywhere, but an uncircumcised penis
supposedly has like twenty five thousand nerve endings in it.
That's all propaganda. Is that brought to you by the
Circumcision Society or the Anti circumcision was It was on
one of those sites. And also that reminds me go
(08:20):
listen to the circumcision podcast. That was a good one.
Oh yeah, did you just want to remind yourself that
we can cover these things without laughing? No? I just
remember that we did circumcision, and then I thought you
were just like, I gotta, I gotta do this. I
gotta be able to say the word penis without laughing.
Penis glands. All right? Uh so what happens is you
got all these nerve endings um during intercourse and that
(08:43):
climax that will be UM messages sent through these large
nerves that run up your spinal cord except for the
vagus nerve, which will is very important that we mentioned
that very bypasses the spinal cord uh and to the
brain and tells the brain, hey, this is great, this
feels awesome. You want to you want to do this again? Right?
(09:05):
And there's a different bundles are I guess stimulated in
different areas, right, Yeah. So you've got like the hypogastric
nerve um, which is located in the uterus and cervics
and women, and in the prostrate in men. So if
you tickle these areas you can conceivably achieve orgasm through
the hypogastric nerve. There's the pelvic nerve transmits from the
(09:29):
vagina and cervix and women obviously, and from the rectum
of both sexes. Yeah, there's some overlap here. Uh, you
go ahead and say that next one, Uh, the pedundle nerve. Yeah,
that's pudendale or pudundle. I'm not sure which or pudundle,
but either way, it's pu d E N d A L. Right,
that's the clitterest in women and the scrotum and penis
(09:51):
and men. So that's like kind of the that's the
well established, long understood bundle of nerves, is it. Yeah,
because the whole the whole concept that a woman can
even have an orgasm is pretty recent. It's pretty new,
like the last century. Yeah, as far as science goes.
You go to Europe and asked some lady a hundred
(10:13):
years ago, two hundred years she's gonna be like, what
are you stupid? Yes, watch this they're like, oh, that's
what that's called. We thought you just had the humors, right, Uh.
And then you've got the vegas nerve, which we uh
said bypasses the spinal cord. It transmits from the cervix,
uterus and vagina and of the nerve fibers or sensory
(10:36):
in the vegas nerve. So the vegas nerve is the
money nerve um and it controls more than just orgasms. Apparently,
if you have vegas nerve damage, you choke when you
try to swallow liquids. We talked about that and something
we've said vegas before, and it had to do with choking.
I'll bet you it was either competitive eating or sword swallowing.
(10:57):
Was the sword swallowing. Okay, So the vegas nerve is
involved in swallowing as well as in umh orgasm. And
I could only find obviously then if it's involved in swallowing,
it's in men and women. But I could only find
reference to the vegas nerve and orgasms in relation to
female orgasms. But we'll get to that later. And the
vegas nerves though, also, like you said, that's a pretty
(11:19):
important nerve and it's very only recently discovered as far
as orgasms go. But the big key to it is
that it bypasses the spinal cord and goes straight to
the brain, which is really really good news for a
certain subset of the human population. Chuck a k A. Paraplegics,
people who have suffered catastrophic spinal injuries, even people whose
(11:43):
spines have been interrupted. Like their spines, their spinal cords
are no longer connected top and bottom, they're totally paralyzed.
They can still um come to climax, which is new
because that was I mean wherever they said, you know,
those days are over for you pretty much. But thank
(12:04):
you Dr Barry Kamiseruk St. Kamiseruk, who we should just
call this guy Dr Oh because he is the as
far as I can sell, the pre eminent orgasm scientists.
He and Whipple are he and Dr Whipple Beverly Beverly,
That's that's what the paraplegic people call her. Of course
(12:25):
they do. Uh. They are at Rutger's at rat gizz
Go Scarlet Knights, and they did some tests on women
in two thousand four who had severed spinal cords, and
they found that they could feel stimulation in their cervits,
they could reach orgasm, and they did the m r
I and said, hey, it looks like this thing is bypassing. Yeah,
(12:46):
they're saying this is real because the the m r
I machine lit up like it's supposed to write, and
like you said that, they showed that the areas of
the brain that respond to the vegas nerve we're lighting
up especially, and they're like, oh, it's the vegas nerve,
which is I mean, we're not getting around. That is
great news because that's one of the most upsetting parts
(13:08):
I would imagine of spinal injury is to say goodbye
to that part of your life, you know, to lose
your sexuality like that. One of my um good friends
dated a girl who was paralyzed from the waist down
and she was able to, um, I have an orgasm,
Thank you vegas nerve. Yeah, the vegas nerves basically proof
that women are God's favorite. Oh yeah, no, actually, we'll
(13:32):
see that's quite the opposite. That's right. I mean, the
vegas nerves, it's it's pretty great for women, but overall,
dumb lumbering men have it away better, as we'll see. Okay,
(14:12):
so let's talk about the brain let's talk about the
pleasure center a k a. Reward circuit. This is a
pretty new Like the nineteen fifties is when they first
kind of discovered this, and it it seems like we
talked about this too. They did experiments on rats. They
basically hooked them up in the skinner box and said, hey,
(14:32):
if you go push this button, you're gonna get rewarded
in a very pleasurable way in your brain. It was
like cocaine or something, wasn't it. I think so? And
they they found out that the rats really loved it,
to the tune of about seven button pushes an hour,
and they didn't eat anymore, didn't want water anymore, just
(14:52):
there they just lay there and push this button. And
it wasn't cocaine. They had electro's implanted in the brain's rewards,
so it was going into stimulating everything. Oh but I
think it had to do with a study on drugs
because the reward center, like sexual arousal and the high
from drugs is what a lot of it's going on there. Well,
not only that, eating, laughing, hanging out with other people,
(15:13):
basically anything that ensures our survival as a species or
as an individual. UM the reward center has something to
do with it. And the whole point of the reward
center is we get this release of dopamine, this pleasurable um,
this pleasurable chemical um that teaches us, Wow, this feels
really good. I want to do that again so I
will survive. These rats died of exhaustion. Though. Yeah, exac's
(15:37):
so crazy, but that's where they discovered it in the fifties.
And um, if we're gonna talk about the pleasure center,
and we should mention a few specific areas, like the
amygdala right regulates your emotions, and we talked about the
brain a lot, so this is sort of rehashed. This
is kind of like up there with fight or Flight,
Like we talked about the reward circuit quite a bit.
We do yeah because we like it. Well, it's a
great circuit. I wish I had that button. I'd be
(15:58):
pushing it seven hundred times an hour. Have to come
along and be like, you need to stop the nucleus accumbents,
which I don't think we've ever mentioned on the show.
I think we have we have that controls the release
of dopamine. It's part of the limbic system, and this
plays a really big role in sexual arousal and like
the high you feel from from certain drugs. The v
(16:21):
t A or the ventral tegmental area that actually releases
the dopamine. It takes its orders from the nucleus acumbens acumbins,
the cerebellum controls your muscle function. Muscles are very important
uh in an orgasm, and the pituitary gland. Here's this
is a big one because it's not just dopamine, this
pleasure that you sense, like you you just you know,
(16:44):
it's not just pleasure. There's other stuff going on, Like
there's tristesse crying after sex, Like that's not just pleasure.
That's you're overwhelmed with emotions sometimes and that is thanks
to our friend the pituitary gland, which releases beta endorphins
that decreased pain, oxytocin which increased feelings of trust, vast
oppressing which increases bonding UM and a lot of these
(17:07):
same hormones and chemicals are released UM when you give birth,
when a woman gives birth as well, which apparently forms
bonds between mother and child. And also UM these things
are released I think, like oxytocin is a lactation chemical
as well, yeah, so both mother and child during breastfeeding,
UM bond have Like basically, are you overwhelmed with the
(17:30):
sense of like, I really like you and I get
this sense you like me too, so let's hang out. Yeah.
Oxytocin is called the hormone of love and actually means
quick birth in Greek. And not only is it released
during childbirth, but it sort of facilitates childbirth and um
nipple stimulation. It is released and that's what makes you
(17:52):
like date, which is pretty cool and calmness. It reduces
your anxiety, makes you calm. So oxytocin up with oxytocin. Yeah,
Investip pressing too has similar effects as well. So you've
got all these chemicals flooding your body, You've got your
reward circuit going. Yeah, and um, this is the orgasm basically,
(18:16):
especially the female orgasm. We should say, like the male
orgasm includes ejaculation, and it's been long understood what's going
on there, right, But like it's pretty much an A
to B relationship. Yeah. But like I said, like it
was pretty recent, like the middle of last century that
people that science came to really say like, okay, all right,
(18:37):
so this is real. Women are just trying to get
on board here, like they they really are experiencing something.
And then in the late nineties and um, mid two thousand's,
a group of Dutch researchers said, we're going to take
this mri I. We're gonna stick people in this mri I.
We're going to bring them to orgasm and then we're
gonna watch what goes on in their brains. Yeah. Well,
(18:57):
first they use the pet scan. Okay, right, I'm sorry.
And actually, since you mentioned men, you told me in
another email said this article is sexist because it only
talks about women almost and I look that up. Apparently
it's because the men's orgasm is so short it's hard
to study it. Okay, so it's like boom, it's over,
(19:19):
whereas a woman can have a prolonged orgasm, much easier
to study that. All right, Um, to pet scan, so
the pets can. But think about this is like the
swing in his study. It's like King Kazy you know,
um this is uh. These these test subjects were brought
to orgasm the pet they were, their brains were watched
(19:40):
with pet scans later on MRI s and what the
Dutch researchers found was that there really aren't that many
differences in the brains between men and women as far
as the pleasure circuit goes. They saw all the stuff
they expected to see. Um, apparently, the the brain if
you take a snapshot of maybe the peak of it
(20:02):
during orgasm or peak orgasm, and you compared it to
a snapshot of the peak of a heroin dose, Uh,
it looks the same, one of the Dutch researchers said.
But there are differences between men's orgasms and women's orgasms
as far as brain regions are concerned. And it's not
really surprising what they found when you hear it. It's
(20:22):
kind of intuitive, you know. Well. The other thing that
they found was the same, though, was that the orbital
orbital frontal cortex shut down for both. And that is
the where you the seat of reason and behavioral control
in your brain. So it's no surprise that that thing
shuts down for both of us. You just completely lose control.
You're enthralled by your orgasm. So the differences that you
(20:45):
mentioned when a woman has sex, the I had this
so right earlier. Peria caductile gray p G is activated
and uh, it saysn't here it controls fight or flight.
I got more that it provokes your defense responses and
it's not necessarily controlling fightre flight. You know, is that right?
(21:07):
Is it activating and or stimulating it? I just said
what I saw said it provokes your defense responses, which
is interesting. Okay, Well, I mean you can say defense responses,
fight or flight. Yeah, let's she was part of it
at least. Uh. The woman's brains show decreased activity in
the migla and hippocampus. This one made sense to me.
Deals with fear anxiety. So fear and anxiety are out
(21:28):
the door all of a sudden. Yeah, which makes sense
because for a woman to have and enjoy sex, and
it takes um uh just physically speaking, it takes far
more trust than it does for a man. Yeah. And
emotionally right, you need to be relaxed exactly general. Uh.
And then here was one that I thought was kind
of interesting. UM. The part of the cortex associated with pain,
(21:50):
the insular cortex, which UM is used to judge, Like them,
the ferocity basically of pain, like just how bad pain
is is active faded, So it's basically scanning, looking looking
out for pain or judging the experience based on partially
through the lens of pain. I think everyone's been there,
whether it's like tickling or anything. We're like, oh, I
(22:13):
hate that, I hate that, but I love that. I
love that. Very fine line. Sometimes there's a very egalitarian
interpretation checkers, thank you. Um faking an orgasm. Not surprisingly,
of course, it doesn't use the same part of the brain.
There's really bears almost no resemblance whatsoever. I didn't even
think that should have been included. I didn't either, but
(22:34):
I was mad in Shane of Freeman for being sexist
at the time when I read that. Now that I
look back on it, I still don't think it should
have been included. That's right, um, so, Chuck. We've been
giving all of the kudos and attention to people who
have orgasms, no problem, right, mm hmm. There are people
out there who, um are who who can't have orgasms,
(23:01):
and yes, they have an orgasmia, which is an inability
to achieve an orgasm. And one of the big culprits
are s sr eyes serotonin as something reuptake inhibitor. What
was the other s? I can't ever Yes, selector serotonin
reuptake inhibitor, which keeps serotonin in your synapse is longer,
(23:24):
so you cannot be depressed. The problem is it decreases
the production the natural production of dopamine in your brain,
and dopamine obviously is how we learn to enjoy and
go do something like achieving an orgasm again. So fortunately,
once people wean themselves off of S. S R EYES
or start taking other drugs that increased dopamine production, usually
(23:48):
that an orgasmia goes away. Usually not all the time, sadly,
a very small percentage. I didn't get a number, but
I did see that it was uncommon, thankfully. Uh post
s s RI I. Sexual dysfunction means after you have
weaned yourself off and you're producing dopamine regularly, you're still
(24:08):
not able to achieve an orgasm. Right. They have no
idea why because they're like, your dopamines working, Like what,
what's your problem? And this is thanks to Dr oh again, right,
I believe, So it's all over this stuff. Uh he um.
That's one of the main reasons he's studying the orgasm,
by the way, is not just to like you're like,
oh cool, look at the brain. It's to help people
(24:31):
that are an orgasmic or who suffered from persistent sexual
arousal syndrome, which sounds horrible. Yeah, that means you're always
sexually aroused, but you can't achieve orgasm right right, and
like you're genuinely always sexually aroused. Um dr oh uh.
Looked at women who have p S A s UM
(24:52):
and put them in an m R I and looked
at their brains, and their brains are showing like, yeah,
I'm turned on right now. I'm turned on right now
for no reason. I can't do anything about it, but
I'm turned on right now. And then even if I
try to have an orgasm, I can't take a curse.
But the science supported it. Yeah, alright, right right, yeah,
(25:12):
So I mean these people were physically sexually aroused and
they couldn't do anything about it. He figured out that, um,
they can use um like meditation techniques apparently works. Um
basically calming techniques apparently hasn't has an impact on decreasing
the sexual arousal. I think he's still trying to figure
(25:34):
out the an orgasm apart. Josh, did you know that
(26:07):
some people can orgasm from being touched in other parts
of their body other than the genitalia. I did know
that for instance, the nipples that happened. Sometimes they think
that the sensations are transmitted to the same areas of
the brain as the ones that come from your genitals,
and so it's just the brain saying all right, I'll
(26:27):
give you a little bonus there. You know, it's it's
lighting up the right part of the brain. So here's
an orgasm. Um. Apparently also knees knows people. Um, there
are apparently women out there who can have orgasms just
from imagery alone, no touching, no touching. Um. And again
(26:47):
these people are in m r s. The brain is
lighting up and they're saying, yep, science supports this woman
is actually having an orgasm from a no touch encounter,
which is the phantom limb thing. Is what really gets me? Yeah,
do you want to talk about that? Yeah? I mean
apparently some people can, do they exp Do they feel
(27:07):
the orgasm in their phantom limb? Yes? Is that what
it's not? It doesn't generate there. So you know how
you have when you experience an orgasm, chuck, do you
know how it's concentrated in your genitalia? Imagine if that
sensation we're in your foot, like that's what felt good?
Just as easily could right now. Imagine that your foot
(27:29):
had been amputated years before, but you're still feeling your
orgasm in your phantom foot. That's what they're talking about.
That's nunety. Well they think what happened is um, there's
a basically a map of your brain. The way we
interpret it is as a maps called the cortical homunculous,
and the cortical homunculous is like, Okay, this part of
the body corresponds to this part of the brain, like
(27:50):
the nerves here correspond here, and apparently if you suffer
an amputation, your brain is like, well, I need to
rewire myself and need to read map a little bit. So, um,
I'm going to assign the sensation in the foot that's
not there any longer to the genitalia, so the brain
can become confused by the genitalia being stimulated that experience
(28:15):
can be felt in the amputated foot, for example. That's
what scientists think right now. You can also say that
they have no idea what's going on. Most people are
reporting having orgasms and phantom limbs. I think it's my
new band name too, cortical homunculous. Oh, that's a good one.
I've got some breaking news, Josh. This is a surprise
(28:36):
for you. My friend Dr oh is at it again.
And this was just released on the old ap wire
last week. No, they kicked it up a notch and
had ladies sit in the f m R I machine,
which is even kicked up a notch from the regular
m R I And they now have the first movie
(29:00):
of the female brain as it approaches, experiences, and recovers
from an orgasm. So they put this couple of ladies actually,
and one of them talked about it. She did a
little uh, I think she blocked about it. She said
that one of the problems in doing this, obviously is
you have to not move very much at all because
it will disrupt the data. So they fitted her with
(29:22):
a breathable plastic mesh helmet that was screwed into the
bed to keep her still. And umdlo, how he's got
an eyeswight chut for some reason. And um they told
her to practice being still while you know, bringing yourself
to climax. So she uh duct taped a kittie bell
(29:45):
from her cats uh what do you call it? The
collar onto her forehead and for two weeks practice bringing
yourself to climax without ringing that bell. And she said,
you know, I got good, good enough at it too.
Successfully do this in the experiment, and uh, it was successful.
So you can go on the internet now and look
this up, um, and watch this video the animation plays. Um,
(30:09):
you see the activity building up in the genitalia area
of the century cortex like it should. Then, um, activity
is spreading to the limbic system. Then it spreads to
the limbic system, which is involved in emotion and long
term memory. Then as the orgasm arrives, activity shoots up
in two parts of the brain, the cerebellum in the
frontal cortex that controlled the muscular tension. To all of
(30:34):
a sudden, the muscles like contract really heavily, so that
shoots up during the orgasm. Um, it reaches a peak
in the hypothalamus and that's when it releases the oxytocin
and all that good stuff and causes the uterus to contract.
And I'm sorry, the nucleus acumbens is uh, that's also
firing off during the peak, controlling the Yeah. And then
(30:58):
afterwards everything like see, it just goes, you goes from
all colorful back to the cold, dead blackness, the Derito's
center starts becoming active. So check, there's a there's a
very big question that we haven't really answered. We understand
(31:20):
why men have orgasms, why do women have orgasms? Uh? Evolutionarily,
but why? I mean, it doesn't make any sense. If
it's an evolutionary adaptation like it is for men, then
why is it so hard for some women to have orgasm? You?
You know, ten of women will go through their entire
(31:42):
lifetimes without ever experiencing an orgasm. That's a lot. So
if it's evolutionary, that just that completely pulls the rug
out of that whole idea, because then it should be
really easy for women and men, right, Okay, So one
of the ideas that's long been bandied about is a
byproduct theory, like you know, why men have nipples because
(32:04):
women have nipples all humans, so at some point during
gestation or whatever, we still keep ours even though we
don't need them and don't need nipples. But we're humans
and women need nipples, So it's yourself makes sense. I
don't use mine anymore. Um, they think that possibly the
female orgasm is the same thing. Men and women are
both humans. Men need to have orgasms, so women do
(32:28):
as byproduct. In this really weird study that came out
last year of twins UM, they studied same sex twins
and opposite sex twins, and same sex twins had similar
orgasm patterns, right opposite sex twins, who if it is
just a byproduct UM, should have the same or similar
(32:49):
orgasm patterns. It didn't hold up. So where does that
leave us? We have no ideas confused. They think that
it could possibly be an evolutionary remnant, like it was
strategic to our survival at some point in the distant pass,
and it's just a relic that kind of hangs around,
which is kind of a depressing thought because then that
means we're watching it as it's endangered and it's growing extinct,
(33:12):
and that's sad, and I think that it needs to
be snatched back from the grips of natural selection. Well,
some things maybe just shouldn't be studied. Maybe you should
just I don't know. I'm sure there's women out there
saying just put those studies away. Yeah, let's just look
at it as a big as a big bonus, right,
(33:32):
And that's thanks, big guy. That's when dr Oe flicks
the switch and the disco ball comes down from the ceiling.
So if you want to know more about orgasms and
see some pretty cool stock images of lit brains and
things like that, you can type in what happens in
the brain during an orgasm. You probably just type in
orgasm in the search bar how stuffworks dot Com will
(33:54):
bring up some interesting cool stuff. Sure, um and uh,
I said search bar. I believe. So that means it's
time for a listener mail. This is about gene patenting,
I believe. And it's from Jim in New Jersey, Garden State.
I love your patent podcast. Guys at Dovetail love that
(34:17):
word very nicely with the Tech Stuff patent podcast. Yeah,
that's what he says. I'm of the opinion that if
you construct a new gene, then you can patent it. However,
if you discover a gene already existing in nature, then
I'm not sure that you should be able to patent it.
This is just Jim's opinion. I like his opinion. Maybe
you can patent the process of identifying the gene seems reasonable.
(34:40):
Maybe you can patent a specific use of the gene,
such as for testing, which you clearly covered as being controversial. However,
you shouldn't be able to quote own the gene what
if it has another use. It's a good point. Uh.
And the epilogue on the Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,
Rebecca Scalute describes a disturbing sin area. If you provide
(35:01):
a sample of our DNA to a medical professional of
your own DNA, uh, and it is found to have
a mutation that's the foundation of the next wonder drug,
you are entitled to nothing. Yeah, So legally your sample
is considered trash unless you've like pre arranged some legal arrangement.
That means you've abandoned it. That's like Henry Alas. Are
(35:22):
you familiar with her? No, I've heard that though if
we talked about this, Yes, she's she's kind of famous
in this really weird way. She's like an African American
lady from the forties or fifties, and um, somehow she
donated like her blood or some tissue or something to
science and it became the basis of like all scientific
(35:43):
research after that. So, like all these breakthroughs and drugs
and cancer blockers and all of this pharmaceutical research was
based on this culture that's still around her line is
still around why she's immortal and her face? Yes, and
her family has gotten nothing from it. Interesting, and you know,
companies have made hundreds of billions of dollars off of
(36:05):
this lady's life, like her biology, and they've got nothing.
I haven't read the book, but I've heard nothing but
good things about it. I'll have to check that out.
So that's from Jim in New Jersey. Thanks Jim. Thanks
Henrietta las Okay said, I think forties or fifties to
look that up. Um, and I'm it's probably even worse
(36:26):
than that, I'm sure than the way I described it,
but I will probably end up reading it. Okay, Okay,
I'm done. I'm ready. Let's finish this thing. That was
a good one. Well done. Well done to YouTube buddy
who kept it very mature. Tip of the camp to
YouTube sir offing it as well. Uh. If you want
(36:47):
to contact me and Chuck Um, you can tweet to
us at s Y s K podcast. You can visit
us on Facebook at Facebook dot com Solis Stuff you
Should Know, and you can send us an email at
Stuff Podcast at how Stuff Works dot com for more
(37:08):
on this and thousands of other topics. Visit how stuff
works dot com. To learn more about the podcast. Click
on the podcast icon in the upper right corner of
our homepage. The how Stuff Works iPhone app has arrived.
Download it today on iTunes.
M Hey everybody, it's me your old friend Josh, And
for this week's s Y s K Selects, I've selected
what happens in the brain during an orgasm. It's a tawdry,
sexy look at things like oxytocin and vassip pressing and
stuff like that. That's pretty good. Actually comes from Christmas
(00:23):
time two thousand eleven, so there's a festive spirit around
it and I hope you enjoy it tremendously. Welcome to
Stuff you Should Know from house Stuff Works dot com. Hey,
(00:43):
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me
as always as Charles W Chuck Bryant. He's got a
new haircut. Everybody looks really good. You can take my
word for short, hind tight, Yeah, high and tight makes
it stuff you should know. Chuck out his ears lowered.
Have you ever heard that? And I don't think anyone
under seventy has ever said that? Though, Yeah, well I
(01:06):
just have. I took the cake. Yes, speaking of have
you ever heard of the origin of the word cakewalk?
The term cakewalk? I wrote a blog on it. You
should check it out. Very surprising, I'll check it out,
very eye opening. Again, tell us just go to the
blog blog. Um, it's so Chuck. Are you ready, Chuck? Yes,
(01:30):
I want to commend you. Okay, Um, just a day
ago I woke up, checked my smartphone and found an
email and you said, how about these first stuff you
should know? And one of them was what happens in
the brain during an orgasm? A week ago? I'm sorry
(01:50):
last week? Yeah, what happens in the brain during an orgasm?
And I thought, oh, man, I don't know about that one. Like,
we've got some younger listeners, are we qualified to talk
about this stuff? I got I started sweating. Um, it
was just it was a wreck. It was a terrible
way to wake up. Um. And I emailed you and
(02:11):
was like are you sure? And you said something that
I thought was this is why I'm commending you. You're like, look, man,
we've done a lot of stuff on like really violent
things which just off the top of my head, shrunken
heads are step by step guide to shrinking heads or
Jack the Cannibalism, Jack the Ripper, um, and we have
we've done a lot of stuff about violent stuff. And
(02:33):
you're like, and I don't want to just be able
to talk about violent stuff but not be able to
talk about sexuality like it's bad or worse than violence.
I don't want to play ball with that scene. And
that is very especially in America. We just celebrated Thanksgiving.
We're a very puritanical country still, and that's absolutely true.
Like violence is celebrated and okay, sexuality is hidden and
(02:56):
it's not okay. Um, and yeah, I don't subject after
that either. So I wanted to commend you for having
that level of foresight insight every kind of site. Thanks
and for um suggesting we do this. Thanks having said that,
if you're a parent, if you're a younger listener, maybe
should ask your parents. We're gonna be very mature about this,
(03:17):
but it's not gonna be funny. But if if you uh,
if you don't think you want your kid listening to
uh anything about orgasms, then switch it off. Hey man,
you're the parent, we're not. It's up to you to
decide when you want your kid. Personally, I went to
sex ed when I was either the fifth or sixth grade,
So I learned about this stuff when I was like
(03:37):
from a teacher. I was like seventh or eight, Really
I was younger. Yeah, yeah, well you're you're very experienced.
I remember one very funny thing that happened. I can't
say it. I wish I could. Oh yeah, yeah, one
kid in my class, I remember his name even It
was he asked a very funny question that he wouldn't
meaning to be funny. And but now that I'm older
looking back, he was asking a legit question and it was.
(04:00):
It was funny. Yeah. Um, that was a great story.
My imagination is running wild right now. All right, let's
get to this, chuck, Yeah, let's this is a really
this is a bang up way to start a podcast.
Like what happens in the brain during an orgasm. Defining
orgasm from the Oxford English Dictionary. It's dry, it's stayed,
(04:24):
it's like clinical, it's perfect. It was perfect. So let's
do that the first one. There a sudden movement, spasm, contraction,
or convulsion, a surge of sexual excitement. That's pretty much
on the on the head there, right, Miriam Webster. Explosive
discharge of neuromuscular tension at the height of sexual arousal,
(04:46):
usually accompanied by the ejaculation of semen in the mail
and by vaginal contractions in the female. And then famous
smut peddler dr Alfred Kinsey. I'm sorry sex researcher. Researcher
l for Kinsey. What was the name of the movie
that Ray Finds played him in? Was it just Kinsey?
It was Kinsey and it was Liam Neeson. Oh yeah, right,
(05:09):
Finds Liam Um he called an orgasm can be likened
to the crescendo or climax and sudden stillness achieved by
an orchestra of human emotions. Also, it could be compared
to an explosion of tensions or to sneezing, which Shane
of Freeman, who wrote this article, took issue with. That's
(05:30):
because it's not true. That's all myth, like if you
sneeze five times, it's like an orgasm, or you'll have
an orgasm. I don't think that's at all what he
was saying. Well, no, but that is an a sense
of tension and then really immediate relief that washes over
your body following like a heavy sneeze. I think that's
what he was saying. Yeah, but there's an urban myth
that if you sneeze like five or seven times in
(05:51):
a row. I don't think Kinsey Dalton urban myths. That
was a scientist and saying since then, so the point
of all this is that the orgasm, wow, it it
is this um sensation that washes over your body. It's
an explosion of tensions. It's like sneezing. Uh. It's accompanied
by ejaculation and men um. There's all these physiological experience
(06:13):
is going on, but all of it is centered in
the brain. The point is the orgasm takes place in
the brain, and thanks to the Wonder Machine, we now
know pretty much what's going on in the brain. We
don't we don't fully understand orgasms, but we have a
much clearer picture than we did even ten years ago,
(06:33):
twenty years ago. Did you ever hear the Billy Connolly,
you know, the comedian his uh, He had one bit
where he talked about when he learned first learning of
an orgasm, when he was like, you know, twelve years old,
like some older friend of his or his brother or
cousin taught him like how to achieve it and what
it was. And he's like, you know, I did it
and it was the best thing ever. And he said,
and then he came back to me the next day
(06:55):
and it was like, you only get one thousand of those.
He was like, the next week, I had used them
all up. Well, I don't know if it was a thousand,
then I don't even know if it's gonna make it
on the air. We'll find out. So let's start clean.
So um, okay, so we have let's let's talk about
where all this starts takes place. Orgasms begin in the
(07:18):
genitalia and they end in the brain, Yeah, pretty much,
that's it. Or they begin in the genitalia, go to
the brain and then come back to the genitalia maybe,
or they begin in the brain and then go to
the genitalia and then back to the brain. We're gonna
get to the bottom of this. But essentially there's a
lot of nerves involved in this, and there's um, you know,
(07:39):
you're not going to be surprised to find that the genitalia,
both male and female, are extremely sensitive nerve wise. Apparently
the clitteress um has about eight thousand nerve endings just
in itself. Uh. Comparatively speaking, the penis, a circumcised penis
is I understand it has about four thousand endings and
(08:00):
the whole thing that glands. Oh really yes, But and
I didn't see this substantiated anywhere, but an uncircumcised penis
supposedly has like twenty five thousand nerve endings in it.
That's all propaganda. Is that brought to you by the
Circumcision Society or the Anti circumcision was It was on
one of those sites. And also that reminds me go
(08:20):
listen to the circumcision podcast. That was a good one.
Oh yeah, did you just want to remind yourself that
we can cover these things without laughing? No? I just
remember that we did circumcision, and then I thought you
were just like, I gotta, I gotta do this. I
gotta be able to say the word penis without laughing.
Penis glands. All right? Uh so what happens is you
got all these nerve endings um during intercourse and that
(08:43):
climax that will be UM messages sent through these large
nerves that run up your spinal cord except for the
vagus nerve, which will is very important that we mentioned
that very bypasses the spinal cord uh and to the
brain and tells the brain, hey, this is great, this
feels awesome. You want to you want to do this again? Right?
(09:05):
And there's a different bundles are I guess stimulated in
different areas, right, Yeah. So you've got like the hypogastric
nerve um, which is located in the uterus and cervics
and women, and in the prostrate in men. So if
you tickle these areas you can conceivably achieve orgasm through
the hypogastric nerve. There's the pelvic nerve transmits from the
(09:29):
vagina and cervix and women obviously, and from the rectum
of both sexes. Yeah, there's some overlap here. Uh, you
go ahead and say that next one, Uh, the pedundle nerve. Yeah,
that's pudendale or pudundle. I'm not sure which or pudundle,
but either way, it's pu d E N d A L. Right,
that's the clitterest in women and the scrotum and penis
(09:51):
and men. So that's like kind of the that's the
well established, long understood bundle of nerves, is it. Yeah,
because the whole the whole concept that a woman can
even have an orgasm is pretty recent. It's pretty new,
like the last century. Yeah, as far as science goes.
You go to Europe and asked some lady a hundred
(10:13):
years ago, two hundred years she's gonna be like, what
are you stupid? Yes, watch this they're like, oh, that's
what that's called. We thought you just had the humors, right, Uh.
And then you've got the vegas nerve, which we uh
said bypasses the spinal cord. It transmits from the cervix,
uterus and vagina and of the nerve fibers or sensory
(10:36):
in the vegas nerve. So the vegas nerve is the
money nerve um and it controls more than just orgasms. Apparently,
if you have vegas nerve damage, you choke when you
try to swallow liquids. We talked about that and something
we've said vegas before, and it had to do with choking.
I'll bet you it was either competitive eating or sword swallowing.
(10:57):
Was the sword swallowing. Okay, So the vegas nerve is
involved in swallowing as well as in umh orgasm. And
I could only find obviously then if it's involved in swallowing,
it's in men and women. But I could only find
reference to the vegas nerve and orgasms in relation to
female orgasms. But we'll get to that later. And the
vegas nerves though, also, like you said, that's a pretty
(11:19):
important nerve and it's very only recently discovered as far
as orgasms go. But the big key to it is
that it bypasses the spinal cord and goes straight to
the brain, which is really really good news for a
certain subset of the human population. Chuck a k A. Paraplegics,
people who have suffered catastrophic spinal injuries, even people whose
(11:43):
spines have been interrupted. Like their spines, their spinal cords
are no longer connected top and bottom, they're totally paralyzed.
They can still um come to climax, which is new
because that was I mean wherever they said, you know,
those days are over for you pretty much. But thank
(12:04):
you Dr Barry Kamiseruk St. Kamiseruk, who we should just
call this guy Dr Oh because he is the as
far as I can sell, the pre eminent orgasm scientists.
He and Whipple are he and Dr Whipple Beverly Beverly,
That's that's what the paraplegic people call her. Of course
(12:25):
they do. Uh. They are at Rutger's at rat gizz
Go Scarlet Knights, and they did some tests on women
in two thousand four who had severed spinal cords, and
they found that they could feel stimulation in their cervits,
they could reach orgasm, and they did the m r
I and said, hey, it looks like this thing is bypassing. Yeah,
(12:46):
they're saying this is real because the the m r
I machine lit up like it's supposed to write, and
like you said that, they showed that the areas of
the brain that respond to the vegas nerve we're lighting
up especially, and they're like, oh, it's the vegas nerve,
which is I mean, we're not getting around. That is
great news because that's one of the most upsetting parts
(13:08):
I would imagine of spinal injury is to say goodbye
to that part of your life, you know, to lose
your sexuality like that. One of my um good friends
dated a girl who was paralyzed from the waist down
and she was able to, um, I have an orgasm,
Thank you vegas nerve. Yeah, the vegas nerves basically proof
that women are God's favorite. Oh yeah, no, actually, we'll
(13:32):
see that's quite the opposite. That's right. I mean, the
vegas nerves, it's it's pretty great for women, but overall,
dumb lumbering men have it away better, as we'll see. Okay,
(14:12):
so let's talk about the brain let's talk about the
pleasure center a k a. Reward circuit. This is a
pretty new Like the nineteen fifties is when they first
kind of discovered this, and it it seems like we
talked about this too. They did experiments on rats. They
basically hooked them up in the skinner box and said, hey,
(14:32):
if you go push this button, you're gonna get rewarded
in a very pleasurable way in your brain. It was
like cocaine or something, wasn't it. I think so? And
they they found out that the rats really loved it,
to the tune of about seven button pushes an hour,
and they didn't eat anymore, didn't want water anymore, just
(14:52):
there they just lay there and push this button. And
it wasn't cocaine. They had electro's implanted in the brain's rewards,
so it was going into stimulating everything. Oh but I
think it had to do with a study on drugs
because the reward center, like sexual arousal and the high
from drugs is what a lot of it's going on there. Well,
not only that, eating, laughing, hanging out with other people,
(15:13):
basically anything that ensures our survival as a species or
as an individual. UM the reward center has something to
do with it. And the whole point of the reward
center is we get this release of dopamine, this pleasurable um,
this pleasurable chemical um that teaches us, Wow, this feels
really good. I want to do that again so I
will survive. These rats died of exhaustion. Though. Yeah, exac's
(15:37):
so crazy, but that's where they discovered it in the fifties.
And um, if we're gonna talk about the pleasure center,
and we should mention a few specific areas, like the
amygdala right regulates your emotions, and we talked about the
brain a lot, so this is sort of rehashed. This
is kind of like up there with fight or Flight,
Like we talked about the reward circuit quite a bit.
We do yeah because we like it. Well, it's a
great circuit. I wish I had that button. I'd be
(15:58):
pushing it seven hundred times an hour. Have to come
along and be like, you need to stop the nucleus accumbents,
which I don't think we've ever mentioned on the show.
I think we have we have that controls the release
of dopamine. It's part of the limbic system, and this
plays a really big role in sexual arousal and like
the high you feel from from certain drugs. The v
(16:21):
t A or the ventral tegmental area that actually releases
the dopamine. It takes its orders from the nucleus acumbens acumbins,
the cerebellum controls your muscle function. Muscles are very important
uh in an orgasm, and the pituitary gland. Here's this
is a big one because it's not just dopamine, this
pleasure that you sense, like you you just you know,
(16:44):
it's not just pleasure. There's other stuff going on, Like
there's tristesse crying after sex, Like that's not just pleasure.
That's you're overwhelmed with emotions sometimes and that is thanks
to our friend the pituitary gland, which releases beta endorphins
that decreased pain, oxytocin which increased feelings of trust, vast
oppressing which increases bonding UM and a lot of these
(17:07):
same hormones and chemicals are released UM when you give birth,
when a woman gives birth as well, which apparently forms
bonds between mother and child. And also UM these things
are released I think, like oxytocin is a lactation chemical
as well, yeah, so both mother and child during breastfeeding,
UM bond have Like basically, are you overwhelmed with the
(17:30):
sense of like, I really like you and I get
this sense you like me too, so let's hang out. Yeah.
Oxytocin is called the hormone of love and actually means
quick birth in Greek. And not only is it released
during childbirth, but it sort of facilitates childbirth and um
nipple stimulation. It is released and that's what makes you
(17:52):
like date, which is pretty cool and calmness. It reduces
your anxiety, makes you calm. So oxytocin up with oxytocin. Yeah,
Investip pressing too has similar effects as well. So you've
got all these chemicals flooding your body, You've got your
reward circuit going. Yeah, and um, this is the orgasm basically,
(18:16):
especially the female orgasm. We should say, like the male
orgasm includes ejaculation, and it's been long understood what's going
on there, right, But like it's pretty much an A
to B relationship. Yeah. But like I said, like it
was pretty recent, like the middle of last century that
people that science came to really say like, okay, all right,
(18:37):
so this is real. Women are just trying to get
on board here, like they they really are experiencing something.
And then in the late nineties and um, mid two thousand's,
a group of Dutch researchers said, we're going to take
this mri I. We're gonna stick people in this mri I.
We're going to bring them to orgasm and then we're
gonna watch what goes on in their brains. Yeah. Well,
(18:57):
first they use the pet scan. Okay, right, I'm sorry.
And actually, since you mentioned men, you told me in
another email said this article is sexist because it only
talks about women almost and I look that up. Apparently
it's because the men's orgasm is so short it's hard
to study it. Okay, so it's like boom, it's over,
(19:19):
whereas a woman can have a prolonged orgasm, much easier
to study that. All right, Um, to pet scan, so
the pets can. But think about this is like the
swing in his study. It's like King Kazy you know,
um this is uh. These these test subjects were brought
to orgasm the pet they were, their brains were watched
(19:40):
with pet scans later on MRI s and what the
Dutch researchers found was that there really aren't that many
differences in the brains between men and women as far
as the pleasure circuit goes. They saw all the stuff
they expected to see. Um, apparently, the the brain if
you take a snapshot of maybe the peak of it
(20:02):
during orgasm or peak orgasm, and you compared it to
a snapshot of the peak of a heroin dose, Uh,
it looks the same, one of the Dutch researchers said.
But there are differences between men's orgasms and women's orgasms
as far as brain regions are concerned. And it's not
really surprising what they found when you hear it. It's
(20:22):
kind of intuitive, you know. Well. The other thing that
they found was the same, though, was that the orbital
orbital frontal cortex shut down for both. And that is
the where you the seat of reason and behavioral control
in your brain. So it's no surprise that that thing
shuts down for both of us. You just completely lose control.
You're enthralled by your orgasm. So the differences that you
(20:45):
mentioned when a woman has sex, the I had this
so right earlier. Peria caductile gray p G is activated
and uh, it saysn't here it controls fight or flight.
I got more that it provokes your defense responses and
it's not necessarily controlling fightre flight. You know, is that right?
(21:07):
Is it activating and or stimulating it? I just said
what I saw said it provokes your defense responses, which
is interesting. Okay, Well, I mean you can say defense responses,
fight or flight. Yeah, let's she was part of it
at least. Uh. The woman's brains show decreased activity in
the migla and hippocampus. This one made sense to me.
Deals with fear anxiety. So fear and anxiety are out
(21:28):
the door all of a sudden. Yeah, which makes sense
because for a woman to have and enjoy sex, and
it takes um uh just physically speaking, it takes far
more trust than it does for a man. Yeah. And
emotionally right, you need to be relaxed exactly general. Uh.
And then here was one that I thought was kind
of interesting. UM. The part of the cortex associated with pain,
(21:50):
the insular cortex, which UM is used to judge, Like them,
the ferocity basically of pain, like just how bad pain
is is active faded, So it's basically scanning, looking looking
out for pain or judging the experience based on partially
through the lens of pain. I think everyone's been there,
whether it's like tickling or anything. We're like, oh, I
(22:13):
hate that, I hate that, but I love that. I
love that. Very fine line. Sometimes there's a very egalitarian
interpretation checkers, thank you. Um faking an orgasm. Not surprisingly,
of course, it doesn't use the same part of the brain.
There's really bears almost no resemblance whatsoever. I didn't even
think that should have been included. I didn't either, but
(22:34):
I was mad in Shane of Freeman for being sexist
at the time when I read that. Now that I
look back on it, I still don't think it should
have been included. That's right, um, so, Chuck. We've been
giving all of the kudos and attention to people who
have orgasms, no problem, right, mm hmm. There are people
out there who, um are who who can't have orgasms,
(23:01):
and yes, they have an orgasmia, which is an inability
to achieve an orgasm. And one of the big culprits
are s sr eyes serotonin as something reuptake inhibitor. What
was the other s? I can't ever Yes, selector serotonin
reuptake inhibitor, which keeps serotonin in your synapse is longer,
(23:24):
so you cannot be depressed. The problem is it decreases
the production the natural production of dopamine in your brain,
and dopamine obviously is how we learn to enjoy and
go do something like achieving an orgasm again. So fortunately,
once people wean themselves off of S. S R EYES
or start taking other drugs that increased dopamine production, usually
(23:48):
that an orgasmia goes away. Usually not all the time, sadly,
a very small percentage. I didn't get a number, but
I did see that it was uncommon, thankfully. Uh post
s s RI I. Sexual dysfunction means after you have
weaned yourself off and you're producing dopamine regularly, you're still
(24:08):
not able to achieve an orgasm. Right. They have no
idea why because they're like, your dopamines working, Like what,
what's your problem? And this is thanks to Dr oh again, right,
I believe, So it's all over this stuff. Uh he um.
That's one of the main reasons he's studying the orgasm,
by the way, is not just to like you're like,
oh cool, look at the brain. It's to help people
(24:31):
that are an orgasmic or who suffered from persistent sexual
arousal syndrome, which sounds horrible. Yeah, that means you're always
sexually aroused, but you can't achieve orgasm right right, and
like you're genuinely always sexually aroused. Um dr oh uh.
Looked at women who have p S A s UM
(24:52):
and put them in an m R I and looked
at their brains, and their brains are showing like, yeah,
I'm turned on right now. I'm turned on right now
for no reason. I can't do anything about it, but
I'm turned on right now. And then even if I
try to have an orgasm, I can't take a curse.
But the science supported it. Yeah, alright, right right, yeah,
(25:12):
So I mean these people were physically sexually aroused and
they couldn't do anything about it. He figured out that, um,
they can use um like meditation techniques apparently works. Um
basically calming techniques apparently hasn't has an impact on decreasing
the sexual arousal. I think he's still trying to figure
(25:34):
out the an orgasm apart. Josh, did you know that
(26:07):
some people can orgasm from being touched in other parts
of their body other than the genitalia. I did know
that for instance, the nipples that happened. Sometimes they think
that the sensations are transmitted to the same areas of
the brain as the ones that come from your genitals,
and so it's just the brain saying all right, I'll
(26:27):
give you a little bonus there. You know, it's it's
lighting up the right part of the brain. So here's
an orgasm. Um. Apparently also knees knows people. Um, there
are apparently women out there who can have orgasms just
from imagery alone, no touching, no touching. Um. And again
(26:47):
these people are in m r s. The brain is
lighting up and they're saying, yep, science supports this woman
is actually having an orgasm from a no touch encounter,
which is the phantom limb thing. Is what really gets me? Yeah,
do you want to talk about that? Yeah? I mean
apparently some people can, do they exp Do they feel
(27:07):
the orgasm in their phantom limb? Yes? Is that what
it's not? It doesn't generate there. So you know how
you have when you experience an orgasm, chuck, do you
know how it's concentrated in your genitalia? Imagine if that
sensation we're in your foot, like that's what felt good?
Just as easily could right now. Imagine that your foot
(27:29):
had been amputated years before, but you're still feeling your
orgasm in your phantom foot. That's what they're talking about.
That's nunety. Well they think what happened is um, there's
a basically a map of your brain. The way we
interpret it is as a maps called the cortical homunculous,
and the cortical homunculous is like, Okay, this part of
the body corresponds to this part of the brain, like
(27:50):
the nerves here correspond here, and apparently if you suffer
an amputation, your brain is like, well, I need to
rewire myself and need to read map a little bit. So, um,
I'm going to assign the sensation in the foot that's
not there any longer to the genitalia, so the brain
can become confused by the genitalia being stimulated that experience
(28:15):
can be felt in the amputated foot, for example. That's
what scientists think right now. You can also say that
they have no idea what's going on. Most people are
reporting having orgasms and phantom limbs. I think it's my
new band name too, cortical homunculous. Oh, that's a good one.
I've got some breaking news, Josh. This is a surprise
(28:36):
for you. My friend Dr oh is at it again.
And this was just released on the old ap wire
last week. No, they kicked it up a notch and
had ladies sit in the f m R I machine,
which is even kicked up a notch from the regular
m R I And they now have the first movie
(29:00):
of the female brain as it approaches, experiences, and recovers
from an orgasm. So they put this couple of ladies actually,
and one of them talked about it. She did a
little uh, I think she blocked about it. She said
that one of the problems in doing this, obviously is
you have to not move very much at all because
it will disrupt the data. So they fitted her with
(29:22):
a breathable plastic mesh helmet that was screwed into the
bed to keep her still. And umdlo, how he's got
an eyeswight chut for some reason. And um they told
her to practice being still while you know, bringing yourself
to climax. So she uh duct taped a kittie bell
(29:45):
from her cats uh what do you call it? The
collar onto her forehead and for two weeks practice bringing
yourself to climax without ringing that bell. And she said,
you know, I got good, good enough at it too.
Successfully do this in the experiment, and uh, it was successful.
So you can go on the internet now and look
this up, um, and watch this video the animation plays. Um,
(30:09):
you see the activity building up in the genitalia area
of the century cortex like it should. Then, um, activity
is spreading to the limbic system. Then it spreads to
the limbic system, which is involved in emotion and long
term memory. Then as the orgasm arrives, activity shoots up
in two parts of the brain, the cerebellum in the
frontal cortex that controlled the muscular tension. To all of
(30:34):
a sudden, the muscles like contract really heavily, so that
shoots up during the orgasm. Um, it reaches a peak
in the hypothalamus and that's when it releases the oxytocin
and all that good stuff and causes the uterus to contract.
And I'm sorry, the nucleus acumbens is uh, that's also
firing off during the peak, controlling the Yeah. And then
(30:58):
afterwards everything like see, it just goes, you goes from
all colorful back to the cold, dead blackness, the Derito's
center starts becoming active. So check, there's a there's a
very big question that we haven't really answered. We understand
(31:20):
why men have orgasms, why do women have orgasms? Uh? Evolutionarily,
but why? I mean, it doesn't make any sense. If
it's an evolutionary adaptation like it is for men, then
why is it so hard for some women to have orgasm? You?
You know, ten of women will go through their entire
(31:42):
lifetimes without ever experiencing an orgasm. That's a lot. So
if it's evolutionary, that just that completely pulls the rug
out of that whole idea, because then it should be
really easy for women and men, right, Okay, So one
of the ideas that's long been bandied about is a
byproduct theory, like you know, why men have nipples because
(32:04):
women have nipples all humans, so at some point during
gestation or whatever, we still keep ours even though we
don't need them and don't need nipples. But we're humans
and women need nipples, So it's yourself makes sense. I
don't use mine anymore. Um, they think that possibly the
female orgasm is the same thing. Men and women are
both humans. Men need to have orgasms, so women do
(32:28):
as byproduct. In this really weird study that came out
last year of twins UM, they studied same sex twins
and opposite sex twins, and same sex twins had similar
orgasm patterns, right opposite sex twins, who if it is
just a byproduct UM, should have the same or similar
(32:49):
orgasm patterns. It didn't hold up. So where does that
leave us? We have no ideas confused. They think that
it could possibly be an evolutionary remnant, like it was
strategic to our survival at some point in the distant pass,
and it's just a relic that kind of hangs around,
which is kind of a depressing thought because then that
means we're watching it as it's endangered and it's growing extinct,
(33:12):
and that's sad, and I think that it needs to
be snatched back from the grips of natural selection. Well,
some things maybe just shouldn't be studied. Maybe you should
just I don't know. I'm sure there's women out there
saying just put those studies away. Yeah, let's just look
at it as a big as a big bonus, right,
(33:32):
And that's thanks, big guy. That's when dr Oe flicks
the switch and the disco ball comes down from the ceiling.
So if you want to know more about orgasms and
see some pretty cool stock images of lit brains and
things like that, you can type in what happens in
the brain during an orgasm. You probably just type in
orgasm in the search bar how stuffworks dot Com will
(33:54):
bring up some interesting cool stuff. Sure, um and uh,
I said search bar. I believe. So that means it's
time for a listener mail. This is about gene patenting,
I believe. And it's from Jim in New Jersey, Garden State.
I love your patent podcast. Guys at Dovetail love that
(34:17):
word very nicely with the Tech Stuff patent podcast. Yeah,
that's what he says. I'm of the opinion that if
you construct a new gene, then you can patent it. However,
if you discover a gene already existing in nature, then
I'm not sure that you should be able to patent it.
This is just Jim's opinion. I like his opinion. Maybe
you can patent the process of identifying the gene seems reasonable.
(34:40):
Maybe you can patent a specific use of the gene,
such as for testing, which you clearly covered as being controversial. However,
you shouldn't be able to quote own the gene what
if it has another use. It's a good point. Uh.
And the epilogue on the Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,
Rebecca Scalute describes a disturbing sin area. If you provide
(35:01):
a sample of our DNA to a medical professional of
your own DNA, uh, and it is found to have
a mutation that's the foundation of the next wonder drug,
you are entitled to nothing. Yeah, So legally your sample
is considered trash unless you've like pre arranged some legal arrangement.
That means you've abandoned it. That's like Henry Alas. Are
(35:22):
you familiar with her? No, I've heard that though if
we talked about this, Yes, she's she's kind of famous
in this really weird way. She's like an African American
lady from the forties or fifties, and um, somehow she
donated like her blood or some tissue or something to
science and it became the basis of like all scientific
(35:43):
research after that. So, like all these breakthroughs and drugs
and cancer blockers and all of this pharmaceutical research was
based on this culture that's still around her line is
still around why she's immortal and her face? Yes, and
her family has gotten nothing from it. Interesting, and you know,
companies have made hundreds of billions of dollars off of
(36:05):
this lady's life, like her biology, and they've got nothing.
I haven't read the book, but I've heard nothing but
good things about it. I'll have to check that out.
So that's from Jim in New Jersey. Thanks Jim. Thanks
Henrietta las Okay said, I think forties or fifties to
look that up. Um, and I'm it's probably even worse
(36:26):
than that, I'm sure than the way I described it,
but I will probably end up reading it. Okay, Okay,
I'm done. I'm ready. Let's finish this thing. That was
a good one. Well done. Well done to YouTube buddy
who kept it very mature. Tip of the camp to
YouTube sir offing it as well. Uh. If you want
(36:47):
to contact me and Chuck Um, you can tweet to
us at s Y s K podcast. You can visit
us on Facebook at Facebook dot com Solis Stuff you
Should Know, and you can send us an email at
Stuff Podcast at how Stuff Works dot com for more
(37:08):
on this and thousands of other topics. Visit how stuff
works dot com. To learn more about the podcast. Click
on the podcast icon in the upper right corner of
our homepage. The how Stuff Works iPhone app has arrived.
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