Wonders of 2011: Orgasm Mapping (Feet Included)

Barry Komisaruk via Time

I was reading through the 2011 Top Ten Sex & Tech Headlines (compiled by Violet Blue at ZDNet) and was brought back to the wondrous brain mapping of female orgasms, which we saw this year.  If you didn't read about this, please, please do.  Sex and neuroscience are a fascinating combo here.  Basically, in the study, women were asked to stimulate erogenous zones with their fingers or a sex toy, while being brain scanned in an fMRI machine.  Here's more from the article by Maia Szalavitz at Time Healthland:

"Not surprisingly, the brain region associated with sensation from the clitoris was distinct from those that respond to stimulation of the cervix or vagina. Each area of the genitals showed up in its own spot, clustered in one region of the brain — the same region associated with genital stimulation in men — overlapping but separate.

"What the researchers did not anticipate was that sensation from the nipples also excited the brain within the same region, right alongside the areas corresponding to genital stimulation, according to lead author Barry Komisaruk, a professor of psychology at Rutgers University. “That was completely unexpected,” he says. It would help explain why the nipples are erogenous zones in women, he says."

In fact, Szalavitz also reveals that, during the study, neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran found that two participants, both of whom had an amputated foot, described their orgasms as being experienced in their genitals and their "phantom feet."  Komisaruk says, “It enlarged their sense of orgasm, and they felt it in their foot as well as their genitals."

Powerful findings, hm?  Makes all those people who act as if sex is all about genitals sound pretty darn silly now, doesn't it?