heavy PET-ing
By smartyboots • Jul 2nd, 2008 • Category: Technology, scienceAccording this recent article in Scientific American, new brain research shows that “At the moment of orgasm, women do not have any emotional feelings”. Although the SciAm article takes a broader view of it, discussing the cycle of arousal and biological basis for desire (the article is totally worth reading), I’ve seen at least five different links to this article that mention only the results of this brain scan experiment. There’s no one who loves a good brain scan study more than I do, but I think it’s time to bring a little skepticism to the proceedings.
So what they did was to put female volunteers in a PET scan machine and 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. They found that many areas of the brain were apparently inactive during orgasm, including those that are thought to control emotions. Only the cerebellum, which is generally associated with coordinating movement, appeared active in the PET machine – hence the dramatic quote above.
There are all kinds of reasons to hold off on making big pronouncements about how the brain works based on brain scan studies. I’m no scientist, but even I can see a few flaws in this experiment. For one, they did a similar experiment on men but saw far less brain deactivation during orgasm (which is not mentioned at all in the SciAm article, I found it here). Wanna know why? Because because PET scanners measure activity over 2 minutes and – for most men at least – it’s all over in a few seconds. Then there’s the matter of sample size – 12 subjects is not a large enough sample to say anything about all women. And lastly – where the heck did they find 12 women who can have a two minute or longer orgasm while they’re in a PET scanner? Have you ever seen one of those things? Not hot. (I mean, unless you’re into that, which is fine. It would be great for doing, say, Logan’s Run roleplaying.) And you can’t move during the scan, either. It’s as if they did a study on women’s cardiovascular fitness, but their subjects were all members of the WNBA – that is to say, people who had extraordinary abilities to start out with.
I’m all for researching brains and orgasms (I like both a lot, and anyway it means that someone is having an orgasm, which is usually a good thing), but remember kids – take it with a grain of salt. Today’s cutting edge brain science could turn out to be tomorrow’s phrenology. But at least we’ll have great props – this time I’ll be Michael York and you be Jenny Agutter!
smartyboots >> a blogger here at Good Vibrations.
Smartyboots likes technology, comic books and country music. She is a member of The Whoreshoes, San Francisco's premiere all-female country band.
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