Could this be why women love reading romances?

[kennyc]

I’ll Have What She’s Thinking
By WILLIAM J. BROAD
Published: September 28, 2013

SCIENCE has looked into some strange things over the centuries — reports of gargantuan sea monsters, purported images of Jesus, sightings of alien spaceships and so on. When I first heard of spontaneous orgasm, while researching a book on yoga, including its libidinal cousin, tantra, I figured it was more allegory than reality and in any event would prove beyond the reach of even the boldest investigators.

Well, I was wrong. It turns out science has tiptoed around the subject for more than a century and of late has made considerable progress in determining not only the neurophysiological basis of the phenomenon but also its prevalence. Men are mentioned occasionally. But sex researchers have found that the novel type of autoerotism shows up mainly in women.

Ground zero for the research is Rutgers University, where scientists have repeatedly had female volunteers put their heads into giant machines and focus their attention on erotic fantasies — the scans reveal that the pleasure centers of their brains light up in ways indistinguishable from everyday orgasms. The lab atmosphere is no-nonsense, with plenty of lights and white coats and computer monitors.

....

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/29/su...anted=all&_r=0

[Katsunami]

Great So men can look at dirty images, and women can read dirty text.

Man: "Honey..."
Woman: "I've got a headache."
Man: "Here, read this."

-> -> ->

*YEEHAA!*

[kennyc]

That's true about men and visual stimulation from what 've read.

[~Kate]

Wonder how many volunteers this study had.

[GoSharks]

I wonder what's more stimulating - eink, tablet, DTB?.... Maybe e-readers really are sexy!

[fjtorres]

A problem with many of these sex studies is their pool of volunteers are invariably college students.
Let's see then try it with 40 year old married folks with three kids, two mortgages, and chronic sleep deprivation instead of hormonal young adults.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

A problem with many of these sex studies is their pool of volunteers are invariably college students.

Some studies actually pay a considerable amount of money to participants. I've seen "Do you want to test sleep drug X for us, for two weeks? You stay at our (quite luxurious) facility, and we'll give you €1000."

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

Some studies actually pay a considerable amount of money to participants. I've seen "Do you want to test sleep drug X for us, for two weeks? You stay at our (quite luxurious) facility, and we'll give you €1000."

Yeah.
And then's the bed rest studies: 6-12 months flat on your back.
Plenty of reading time in those and real good pay.
But I think I'll pass nonetheless.

[cromag]

Rats! Rutgers wasn't doing anything like this when I was going there!

[Lynx-lynx]

Oh yep .... I can state that reading a book has worked for me!!!

I'm trying to remember if it was Jacqueline Sussan and Harold Robbins and maybe others.

But, I was a teenager (from memory, lol)

Edit

It gives expression to the term 'naughty thoughty' eh!!

[Mivo]

That was a stimulating read!

[meeera]

Wow, that's a badly-written article.

Subjects often thrash about so forcefully that obtaining clear images of their brains can be difficult.

“Head movement is a huge issue,” Nan Wise, a doctoral candidate at Rutgers who helps run the project, said in an interview. “It’s hard to get a decent signal.”

She said a volunteer’s moving her head more than two millimeters — less than a 10th of an inch — can make for a bad day in the lab.

2 mm of movement is "thrashing about forcefully"? They make it sound like there's a whole When Harry Met Sally thing going on, when all it is is that, typically, awake human subjects find it difficult to hold completely and utterly still during fMRI scanning. We knew that already.

They also don't seem to have actually shown that their subjects were reaching orgasm, as far as I can tell amongst that muddle; just that their equipment and methods detected arousal (and couldn't distinguish it from the moment of orgasm).

Bottom line: some subjects feel arousal while having erotic fantasies. How groundbreaking!

ETA: I poked around and I think I've found the source. I can't figure out how to link to it, but just look for "Tactile imagery somatotopically activates genital sensory homunculus: fMRI evidence ".

Spoiler:

In the course of our previous study (Komisaruk et al, 2009; SFN Abstracts 562.18) in which we mapped the sensory cortical representation of the clitoris, vagina, cervix, nipple and finger, our control procedure - imagining stimulation of those specific body regions while remaining motionless - generated activity that overlapped substantially with that induced by their actual physical stimulation. That is, when the research participants were instructed to imagine the thumb being tapped, the corresponding homuncular region of the somatosensory cortex became activated. Similarly, when instructed to imagine the clitoris or the vagina being stimulated, the corresponding homuncular sensory cortical regions became activated. Moreover, in the case of each body region studied, the imagery procedure activated the sensory relay region (VPL) of the thalamus. Surprisingly, when the participants were instructed to imagine the nipple being stimulated, activations were found not only in the corresponding thoracic homuncular region, but also in the genital sensory cortical region (i.e., the paracentral lobule). Cerebellar and supplementary motor area activations were activated during the imagery procedures. In general, while there was a lower magnitude of signal intensity in response to imagery than to physical stimulation, the reverse was true in the frontal cortex. The present findings are consistent with, and extend to the genital system, recent reports of imagery-induced activation of the sensory cortices in each of the sensory systems.

Three things are worth further noting: firstly, this is simply a poster presentation, which means it hasn't been peer reviewed; secondly, there was no reading erotica involved, just directed tactile imagery. And thirdly, they weren't studying orgasm at all.

[frahse]

Who needs giant machines?

Young men have "dreams."

Probably women as well.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by kennyc

That's true about men and visual stimulation from what 've read.

It's true from what I've seen

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

It's true from what I've seen

A regular viewer of Animal Planet bonobo videos, huh?
Each primate to their own.