Women's brains do not disconnect during orgasm, in fact it increases their activity

A recent study has shown that during female climax increases activity in the brain areas of women who are in charge of memory and emotions.

It is difficult for scientists to study real-time brain activity during orgasm. Scanners such as MRI scans do not specifically invite you to engage in any sexual activity and, furthermore, the subject can not move his head during the tests. Even so, a team of US researchers has managed to do the most detailed study to date on the female climax.

The paper, published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine, demonstrates why that point of maximum pleasure diminishes the feeling of pain in women and reveals that, far from disconnecting, the brain remains active during the process.

The ten heterosexual women who participated in the experiment had to forget claustrophobia and modesty to first stimulate themselves inside a machine, and then let their partners do so.

In the 1980s, two other researchers from the same university found that women's ability to withstand pain increased by 75% during stimulation and that they were able to handle pinching twice as hard. The most recent work has found an explanation: orgasm activates the dorsal nucleus of rafe, an area of ​​the brain involved in the release of serotonin, a neurotransmitter with analgesic properties. It also sets in motion the cuneiform nucleus, which is part of the pain control system.

The findings also contradict previous studies suggesting that during orgasm the female brain slows its activity in certain regions, including those related to emotions. Based on these results, it was believed that females needed to forget worries and distractions to reach climax.

But this latter work proves the opposite: brain activity in the regions responsible for movement, senses, memory and emotions increased on the road to orgasm, to reach the maximum and then descend again.

What is not yet clear is the reason why the sensation of pain during the climax decreases, or if the same thing happens in men. It could be because the brain needs to deactivate the neuronal circuits of suffering to feel real pleasure.

Although this kind of experiments may seem morbid, researchers defend a purely scientific interest and say that people of all kinds participate. In this work, even a septuagenarian collaborated that had no problem in enjoying despite the machine's tightness.