Stuff You Should Know - SYSK Selects: What happens in the brain during an orgasm?

Episode Date: April 14, 2018

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). Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey everybody, it's me, your old friend Josh. And for this week's SYS Case Selects, I've selected what happens in the brain during an orgasm. It's a tawdry, sexy look at things like oxytocin and vasopressin and stuff like that.

It's pretty good actually, comes from Christmastime 2011. So there's a festive spirit around it. And I hope you enjoy it tremendously. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me as always is Charles W. Chuck Bryant. He's got a new haircut, everybody. Looks really good.

You're gonna have to take my word for it. Yep, short, high and tight. Yeah, high and tight makes it Stuff You Should Know. Chuck got his ears lowered, have you ever heard that? Yeah, I don't think anyone under 70 has ever said that though. Yeah, well I just have. I took the cake.

Yes. Speaking of, have you ever heard of the origin of the word cake walk? The term cake walk? I wrote a blog on it, you should check it out. Very surprising. I'll check it out. Very eye-opening.

You're gonna tell us or just go to the blog? Go to the blog. So Chuck, are you ready? Yes. Chuck. Yes. I want to commend you. Okay.

Just a day ago, I woke up, checked my smartphone, and found an email and you said, how about these for Stuff You Should Know? And one of them was, what happens in the brain during an orgasm? You mean a week ago. I'm sorry, 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. Like, are we qualified to talk about this stuff? We're not. I started sweating. It was just, it was a wreck. It was a terrible way to wake up. And I emailed you and 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 shrunk at heads, our step-by-step guide to shrinking heads. Or Jack the Ripper. Cannibalism.

Jack the Ripper. And we have, we've done a lot of stuff about violent stuff. And 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. Yeah.

I don't want to play ball with that scene. And that is very, especially in America. It's a scene. 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 it's not okay.

Right. And yeah, I don't subscribe to that either. So I wanted to commend you for having that level of foresight, insight, every kind of sight. Hey, thanks. And for suggesting we do this. Thanks. Having said that, if you're a parent,

if you're a younger listener, maybe you should ask your parents. We're going to be very mature about this. But it's not going to be funny. But if you don't think you want your kid listening to 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 from a teacher. Mine was like seventh or eighth. Really, I was younger. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, 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. He asked a very funny question that he wouldn't

mean him to be funny. But now that I'm older, looking back, he was asking a legit question, and it was funny. Yeah. That was a great story. It's quite a tease. My imagination is running wild right now. All right, let's get to this.

Chuck. Yeah. 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.

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. Yeah. That's pretty much on the head there.

Right. The Merriam-Webster, explosive discharge of neuromuscular tension at the height of sexual arousal, usually accompanied by the ejaculation of semen in the male, and by vaginal contractions in the female. Right. And then famous smut peddler Dr. Alfred Kinsey. I'm sorry, sex researcher Alfred Kinsey.

What was the name of the movie that Ray Fiennes played him in? Was it just Kinsey? It was Kinsey, and it was Liam Neeson. Oh. Yeah. Ray Fiennes, Liam Neeson, come on. He called an orgasm, it 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 Shayna Freeman, who wrote this article, took issue with. That's 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 a myth now. That sense of tension, and then immediate relief that washes over your body following a heavy sneeze. I think that's what he was saying. Yeah, but there is an urban myth that if you sneeze five or seven times in a row.

I don't think Kinsey dealt in urban myths. No. Who's a scientist? I've been saying since then. So the point of all this is that the orgasm, while it is this sensation that washes over your body, it's an explosion of tensions, it's like sneezing, it's accompanied by ejaculation in men.

There's all these physiological experiences 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 fully understand orgasms, but we have a much clearer picture than we did even 10 years ago, 20 years ago.

Did you ever hear the Billy Connolly, the comedian? Yeah. He had one bit where he talked about when he first learned of an orgasm when he was 12 years old, like some older friend of his or his brother or cousin taught him how to achieve it and what it was. And he's like, I did it, and it was the best thing ever.

And he said, and then he came back to me the next day and was like, you only get 1,000 of those. He was like, the next week, I had used them all up. It was funny. Well? I don't know if it was 1,000. Then I don't even know if this is going to make it on the air. We'll find out.

So let's start clean. So let's talk about where all this starts. Takes place, orgasms begin in the genitalia and they end in the brain, 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 going to get to the bottom of this, essentially, there's a lot of nerves involved in this. And you're not going to be surprised to find that the genitalia, both male and female, are extremely sensitive, nerve-wise. Apparently, the clitoris has about 8,000 nerve endings just in itself.

Comparatively speaking, the penis, a circumcised penis, as I understand it, has about 4,000 nerve endings in the whole thing, the glands. Oh, really? Yes. And I didn't see this substantiated anywhere. But an uncircumcised penis supposedly has like 25,000 nerve endings in it.

Oh, that's all propaganda. Is that brought to you by the Circumcision Society? Or the Anti-Circumcision Society? It was on one of those sites. And also, that reminds me, go 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 remembered that we did circumcision and that was good. I thought you were just like, I got to do this. I got to be able to say the word penis without laughing. Penis glands. All right.

So what happens is, you got all these nerve endings during intercourse and at climax. There will be messages sent through these large nerves that run up your spinal cord, except for the vagus nerve, which is very important that we mentioned that. It's very. Bypasses the spinal cord and to the brain and tells the brain, hey, this is great.

This feels awesome. You want to do this again. Right. And there's different bundles, I guess, stimulated in different areas. So you've got the hypogastric nerve, which is located in the uterus in cervix in women and in the prostate 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 vagina in cervix in women, obviously. And from the rectum of both sexes, there's some overlap here. Go ahead and say that next one. The pudundal nerve?

Yeah, that's pudundal or pudundal. I'm not sure which. Or pudundal. But either way, it's P-U-D-E-N-D-A-L. Right. That's the clitoris in women and the scrotum in penis in men. So that's the well-established, long-understood bundle of nerves.

Is it? Yeah. Because the whole concept that a woman can even have an orgasm is pretty recent. Sure. It's pretty new, like middle of the last century. Yeah, as far as science goes, you go to Europe and ask some lady 100 years ago, 200 years ago.

She's going to 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. The humors. And then you've got the vagus nerve, which we said

bypasses the spinal cord. It transmits from the cervix. Uterus and vagina. And 80% to 90% of the nerve fibers are sensory in the vagus nerve. So the vagus nerve is a money nerve. And it controls more than just orgasms. Apparently, if you have vagus nerve damage,

you choke when you try to swallow liquids. Yeah, we talked about that in something. We've said vagus before, and it had to do with choking. I'll bet you it was either competitive eating or sword swallowing. Yep, sword swallowing. Was it sword swallowing? Yep.

OK, so the vagus nerve is involved in swallowing, as well as in 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 vagus nerve and orgasms in relation to female orgasms. Yeah, me too. But we'll get to that later.

And the vagus nerve, though, also, like you said, that's a pretty 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 spines have been interrupted, like their spinal cords are no longer connected, top and bottom, they're totally paralyzed. They can still come to climax. Which is new, because that was, I mean, forever, they said, those days are over for you, pretty much.

But thank you, Dr. Barry Kamisaruk. St. Kamisaruk? Who, we should just call this guy Dr. O, because he is the, as far as I can tell, the preeminent orgasm scientist. He and Whipple are. Dr. Whipple? Yeah, Beverly Whipple.

St. Beverly. That's what the paraplegic people call it. Of course they do. They are at Rutgers, at Rutgers, go scarlet nights, and they did some tests on women in 2004 who had severed spinal cords, and they found that they could feel stimulation in their cervix. They could reach orgasm.

And they did the MRI and said, hey, it looks like this thing is bypassing the spinal cord. They're not just messing with us. Yeah. They're saying, this is real? Because the MRI machine lit up like it's supposed to. Right, and like you said, they showed that the areas of the brain that respond to the vagus nerve

were lighting up especially, and they're like, oh, it's the vagus nerve. Which is, I mean, we're not kidding around. That is great news, because that's one of the most upsetting parts, I would imagine, of spinal injury is to say goodbye to that part of your life, to lose your sexuality, like that. One of my good friends dated a girl

who was paralyzed from the waist down, and she was able to have an orgasm. Thank you, vagus nerve. Yeah, the vagus nerve is basically proof that women are God's favorites. Oh, yeah. No, actually, we'll see that's quite the opposite. That's right.

I mean, the vagus nerve, it's pretty great for women, but overall, dumb, lumbering men have it way better, as we'll see. OK. ["Hate Dude," by David Lashor, plays in bright rhythm.] On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s, called David Lashor and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude,

bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars,

friends, and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist?

So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in, as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s, called on the iHeart radio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Ah, OK, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, god. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you.

Oh, man. And so will my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general, can get messy.

You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Oh, just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. So let's talk about the brain.

Let's talk about the Pleasure Center, a.k.a. Reward Circuit. Yeah. This is a pretty new, like the 1950s is when they first kind of discovered this. And 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, if you go push this button, you're going to get rewarded in a very pleasurable way in your brain. It was like cocaine or something, wasn't it? I think so. And they found out that the brats really loved it to the tune of about 700 button pushes an hour. Oh, yeah. And they didn't eat anymore, didn't want water anymore.

They would just lay there. They would just lay there and push this button. And it wasn't cocaine. They had electrodes implanted in the brain's reward center. So it was going and just stimulating it every time. Well, no, 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. Basically, anything that ensures our survival as a species or as an individual, 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 chemical, that teaches us, wow, this feels really good.

I want to do that again. So I will survive. These rats died of exhaustion, though, sadly. That's so crazy. But that's where they discovered it in the 50s. And if we're going to talk about the pleasure center, we should mention a few specific areas like the amygdala. Regulates your emotions.

And we talk 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, because we like it. Well, it's a great circuit. I wish I had that button. I'd be pushing it 700 times an hour.

I'd have to come along and be like, you need to stop, dude. The nucleus accumbens, 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 the high you feel from certain drugs. Gotcha. The VTA or the ventral tegmental area that actually releases the dopamine. It takes its orders from the nucleus accumbens. Accumbens. The cerebellum controls your muscle function. Muscle is very important in an orgasm.

And the pituitary gland. This is a big one, because it's not just dopamine, this pleasure that you sense. Like 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 emotion sometimes.

And that is thanks to our friend the pituitary gland, which releases beta endorphins that decrease pain, oxytocin, which increase feelings of trust, vasopressin, which increases bonding. And a lot of these same hormones and chemicals are released when you give birth, when a woman gives birth as well, which apparently forms bonds between mother and child.

And also, these things are released, I think like oxytocin is a lactation chemical as well. So both mother and child during breastfeeding bond. Like basically you're overwhelmed with the sense of like, I really like you. And I get this since you like me too. So let's hang out. Yeah, oxytocin is called the hormone of love.

And it actually means quick birth in Greek. And not only is it released during childbirth, but it sort of facilitates childbirth. Gotcha. And nipple stimulation, it is released. And that's what makes you lactate, which is pretty cool. And calmness, it reduces your anxiety, it makes you calm. So oxytocin up with oxytocin.

Yeah, and vasopressin too has similar effects as well. So you've got all these chemicals flooding your body. You've got your reward circuit going. And all the right ways. Yeah, and this is the orgasm, basically. 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, OK, all right. So this is real. Women aren't just trying to like get on board here. They really are experiencing something. And then in the late 90s and mid 2000s,

a group of Dutch researchers said, we're going to take this MRI. We're going to stick people in this MRI. We're going to bring them to orgasm. And then we're going to watch what goes on in their brains. Yeah, well, first they use the PET scan. OK, you're 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. Oh, OK. So it's like, boom, it's over. Whereas a woman can have a prolonged orgasm,

much easier to study that. Right. All right. To PET scan? So the PET scan. But think about this. This is like the swing in a study. So it's like Ken Casey, you know?

This is, these test subjects were brought to orgasm. Their brains were watched with PET scans later on MRIs. 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. Apparently, the brain, if you take a snapshot of maybe

the peak of it during orgasm, during peak orgasm, and you compared it to a snapshot of the peak of a heroin dose, it looks 95% 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 kind of intuitive, you know? Well, the other thing that they found was the same, though,

was that the orbital frontal cortex shut down for both. And that is 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. Right. You're enthralled by your orgasm.

So the differences that you mentioned, when a woman has sex, the, I had this so right earlier, pericaductal gray, PAG, is activated. And it says in here, controls fight or flight. I got more that it provokes your defense responses. And it's not necessarily controlling fight or flight. Is that right? Is it activating it or stimulating it?

I just said it. What I saw is that it provokes your defense responses, which is interesting. OK. Well, I mean, you can say defense responses, fight or flight. Yeah, that's true. It's part of it, at least. OK.

The woman's brain showed decreased activity in the mygdala and hippocampus. This one made sense to me. Deals of fear and anxiety. So fear and anxiety are out the door all of a sudden. Yeah, which makes sense, because for a woman to have and enjoy sex, just physically speaking, it takes far more trust than it does for a man.

Yeah, and emotionally, you need to be relaxed. Exactly. In general. And then here was one that I thought was kind of interesting. The part of the cortex associated with pain, the insular cortex, which is used to judge like the ferocity, basically, of pain, like just how bad pain is.

It is activated. So it's basically scanning, 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 tickling or anything. We were like, oh, I hate that. I hate that. But I love that.

I love that. Jessa, very fine line. Sometimes. That is a very egalitarian interpretation, Chuckers. Thank you. Faking an orgasm, not surprisingly. Of course, it doesn't use the same part of the brain. There really bears almost no resemblance whatsoever.

I didn't even think that should have been included. I didn't either. But I was mad at Shayna Freeman for being sexist at the time when I read that. So now that I look back on it, I still don't think it should have been included. That's right. So Chuck, we've been giving all of the kudos and attention

to people who have orgasms no problem, right? There are people out there who can't have orgasms. Anorgasmic? Yes, they have anorgasmia, which is an inability to achieve an orgasm. One of the big culprits are SSRIs, serotonin re- Something re-uptake inhibitor. What was the other S?

I can't ever remember. Selective. Yeah, selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitor, which keeps serotonin in your synapses longer so you can not be depressed. The problem is it decreases the production, the natural production of dopamine in the 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 SSRIs or start taking other drugs that increase dopamine production, usually that anorgasmia goes away. Usually. Not all the time. No. Sadly, a very small percentage.

I didn't get a number, but I did see that it was uncommon, thankfully. Post-SSRI sexual dysfunction means after you have weaned yourself off and you're producing dopamine regularly, you're still not able to achieve an orgasm. And they have no idea why. No.

Because they're like, your dopamine is working. Like, what's your problem? And this is thanks to Dr. O, again, right? I believe so. So all over this stuff. He, that's one of the main reasons he's studying the orgasm, by the way, is not just to like, like, oh, cool, look at the brain.

It's to help people that are anorgasmic. Or who suffer from persistent sexual arousal syndrome, which sounds horrible. Yeah, that means you're always sexually aroused, but you can achieve orgasm, right? Right. And you're genuinely always sexually aroused. Dr. O looked at women who have PSAS

and put them in an MRI 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 good 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. So it's like a curse.

But the science supported it on the MRI, right? Right, yeah. So I mean, these people were physically sexually aroused and they couldn't do anything about it. He figured out that they can use meditation techniques. Apparently works. Basically, calming techniques apparently has an impact on decreasing the sexual arousal.

I think he's still trying to figure out the anorgasmia part. Yes. OK. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point,

but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64?

Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing.

Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it, and popping it back in, as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass.

The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. OK, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help.

This, I promise you. Oh, god. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so will my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me.

Yeah, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general, can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody,

about my new podcast, and make sure to listen, so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Josh, did you know that 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 happen sometimes. They think that these 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 give you a little bonus there. You know, it's lighting up the right part of the brain. So here's an orgasm.

Apparently also, knees, nose, people. There are apparently women out there who can have orgasms just from imagery alone. No touching. No touching. And again, these people are in MRIs. The brain is lighting up, and they're saying, yep, science supports us.

This woman is actually having an orgasm from a no-touch encounter, which is Craig Craig. The phantom limb thing is what really gets me. Yeah, do you want to talk about that? Yeah, I mean, apparently some people can, did they feel the orgasm in their phantom limb? Yes. Is that what, it doesn't generate there.

So you know how you have, when you experience an orgasm, Chuck, you know how it's concentrated in your genitalia? I do know. Imagine if that sensation were in your foot, like that's what felt good, just as easily could, right? Sure. Now imagine that your foot 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 nutty. Well, they think what happened is, there's basically a map of your brain. The way we interpret it is there's a map called the cortical homunculus. And the cortical homunculus is like, OK,

this part of the body corresponds to this part of the brain, like the nerves here correspond here. And apparently, if you suffer an amputation, your brain is like, well, I need to rewire myself. I need to remap a little bit. So 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 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, but people are reporting having orgasms in phantom limbs. I think it's my new band name, too. Yeah.

Cortical homunculus. That's a good one. I've got some breaking news, Josh. Oh, wow. This is a surprise for you, my friend. OK. Dr. O has added again. And this was just released on the old AP wire last week,

November 18. They kicked it up a notch and had ladies sit in the fMRI machine, which is even kicked up a notch from the regular MRI. And they now have the first movie of the female brain as it approaches, experiences, and recovers from an orgasm. Wow. So they put this couple of ladies, actually. And one of them talked about it.

She did a little, 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'll disrupt the data. So they fitted her with a breathable plastic mesh helmet that was screwed into the bed to keep her still. And Fidelio. He's got an eyes wide shut for some reason.

And they told her to practice being still while bringing herself to climax. So she duct taped a kitty bell from her cats. What do you call it? Collar. Collar onto her forehead. And for two weeks, practiced bringing herself to climax without ringing that bell.

And she said, I got good enough at it to successfully do this in the experiment. And it was successful. So you can go on the internet now and look this up and watch this video. The animation plays. You see activity building up in the genitalia area of the sensory cortex, like it should.

Then 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 and the frontal cortex, that control the muscular tension. So all of a sudden, the muscles contract really heavily.

So that shoots up. During the orgasm, 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 accumbens, that's also firing off during the peak. Because it's controlling the release of dopamine. Yeah.

And then afterward, everything, like you see it, just goes from all colorful back to the cold, dead blackness of your brain. The Doritos Center starts becoming active. So Chuck, there's a very big question that we haven't really answered. We understand why men have orgasms. Why do women have orgasms?

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 know, 10% of women will go through their entire lifetimes without ever experiencing an orgasm. How many?

10%. Wow. That's a lot. Yeah. So if it's evolutionary, that completely pulls the rug out of that whole idea, because then it should be really easy for women and men, right? Yeah.

OK, so one of the ideas that's long been bandied about is the byproduct theory. Like, you know why men have nipples? Because women have nipples, and we're all humans. So at some point during gestation or whatever, we still keep ours, even though we don't need them. Men don't need nipples, but we're humans, and women need nipples, so it just makes sense.

I don't use mine anymore. 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 as byproduct. In this really weird study that came out last year of twins, they studied same-sex twins and opposite-sex twins. And same-sex twins had similar orgasm patterns, right?

OK. Opposite-sex twins, who, if it is just a byproduct, should have the same or similar orgasm patterns, it didn't hold up. So where does that leave us? We have no idea, still. Can't you use? They think that it could possibly be an evolutionary remnant,

like it was strategic to our survival at some point in the distant past, 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. 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. Let's just look at it as a big bonus. And that's when Dr. O. 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 at howstuffworks.com, and it'll bring up some interesting, cool stuff. Sure. And 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. It dovetails, love that word, very nicely, with the tech stuff patent podcast. Oh, really? 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. 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? That's a good point. In the epilogue on the immortal life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot describes a disturbing scenario. If you provide a sample of our DNA

to a medical professional of your own DNA, and it is found to have a mutation that's the foundation of the next wonder drug, you are entitled to nothing. So legally, your sample is considered trash unless you've pre-arranged some legal arrangement. That means you've abandoned it. That's like Henrietta Lacks.

Are you familiar with her? No, I've heard that, though. Have we talked about this? Yeah, she's kind of famous in this really weird way. She's like an African-American lady from the 40s or 50s. And somehow she donated her blood or some tissue or something to science. And it became the basis of all scientific research

after that. So all these breakthroughs in drugs and cancer blockers and like all of this pharmaceutical research was based on this culture that's still around. Her line is still around. That's why she's immortal. Yes. And her family has gotten nothing from it.

Interesting. And companies have made hundreds of billions of dollars off of this lady's life. Wow. 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 Lacks. OK. 1940s, you said? I think 40s or 50s. Look that up. And it's probably even worse than that.

I'm sure than the way I described it. But we'll probably end up reading it some more. OK. OK. I'm done. I'm ready. Let's finish this. That was a good one.

Well done. Well done to you, too, buddy. We kept it very mature. Tip of the cap to you, too, sir. Doffing it as well. If you want to contact me and Chuck, you can tweet to us at S-Y-S-K podcast. You can visit us on Facebook at facebook.com

slash stuff you should know. And you can send us an email at stuffpodcast at howstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. To learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon in the upper right corner of our home page.

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