Learning How to Work the Sexual Brain-Body Connection

How the sexual brain-body connection works is a hot topic. I was recently contacted by Katie Couric media to field some questions on how sex affects the brain. Here are some highlights of my interview.

Learning how the sexual brain-body connection works can help us work it better.

The first step is recognizing that the ability to experience pleasures (in and out of the bedroom) is not a luxury but a necessity for a well-functioning brain and overall well-being. When we can’t experience satisfying pleasures, sexual or otherwise, our physical and mental well-being suffers. The state of anhedonia—or inability to experience satisfying pleasures—is both a symptom of mental health challenges as well as a cause of them, creating a negative cycle that contributes to more anxiety, depression, stress-related disorders, and diminished physical health.

Educating ourselves about sexuality and the critical role pleasure plays in healthy living is key. Both men and women can become more educated about their sexual selves.

On a related note, we still have big gaps in the scientific literature about women’s sexual health. We know more about men’s health and sexual functioning as it has been more widely studied. There’s been recent attention in the media about how little is known, for example, about the clitoris, which has, up until recently, been virtually ignored in medicine.

These gaps in the literature are what sent me back to school for a Ph.D. in sex neuroscience after being a psychotherapist and certified sex therapist for many years. And for the record, it isn’t just medical doctors who don’t get trained in sexuality. Psychotherapists in most training programs are not required to take courses in sexuality except for marriage and family therapy programs, where these courses are mandated.

How do sexuality and pleasure work in the brain and body?

Let’s start with how sensations from the genitals get to the brain, where they can be felt and experienced. As you will see, this information will have practical applications when it comes to sexual pleasure.

There is a region of the brain called the somatosensory cortex that allows us to feel touch, temperature, and pain sensations from all over the body. Each part of the body is wired with sensory nerves that send inputs into the spine and then up to the brain, where they register in the somatosensory cortex. This is basic science, but until recently, we haven’t paid much attention to this when it comes to sex. Conducting sex research is complicated for many reasons and is not prioritized in this country. My first research project, published in 2011 with Dr. Barry Komisaruk, used fMRI, a noninvasive brain imaging method, to study the inputs from the female genitals—the clitoris, vagina, and cervix—to the brain’s somatosensory cortex.

We did a similar study with men, published in 2020, mapping the connections between the male genitalia—the penis, shaft, glans (head of the penis), testicles, scrotum, and rectum (which we didn’t include for women, but we would expect similar results).

We found that for both men and women, the sensations from the genitals are processed by a specific place within the somatosensory cortex which we named the genital sensory cortex (I informally call it the brain’s crotch). And what is of practical importance is that physical stimulation of each region of the genitals (in women: the clitoris, vagina, or cervix; and in men: the head of the penis, the shaft of the penis, testicles, scrotum, and rectum) activates a slightly different but adjacent and overlapping part of the genital sensory cortex—ground zero for sexual sensation. The more regions of the genitals get stimulated, the bigger area of the brain’s somatosensory cortex is activated, with the result that more sensations are registered, processed by the brain, and ultimately experienced (in the right circumstances) as sexual pleasure, with the potential of adding up and culminating in orgasm.

And just for the record, although nipples aren’t considered part of the genitals, stimulation of the nipples in both men and women activated the same region, which provides a scientific explanation of why nipple stimulation can feel sexy.

How to apply these findings?

Make sure to activate more pleasure keys on your genital keyboard. Enroll more regions of your sexual anatomy for a better response. The more genital regions you stimulate, the more likely big sensations will register in your sensory brain.

Practice makes perfect.

Here is a common aphorism from neuroscience, also called Hebb’s rule: Neurons (cells in the brain and nervous system) that fire together wire together. What that means is that the more the neural pathways between the genitals and the brain get activated, the stronger the connections become. This is the basis of learning—connections made between neurons.

The neural pathways that connect the genitals with the pleasure places in the brain can be strengthened by repeated stimulation. In other words, the adage that practice makes perfect is true. When we masturbate or have sex with a partner, the sensory pathways of neurons “fire” together and then “wire” together, making these pleasure pathways stronger. This makes it easier for us to experience sexual pleasure and enhances our ability to access our orgasms, even contributing to more intense orgasms.

Sexy Brain

Source: Benjamin Lehman/Pexels

Put your attention on sensations.

As was demonstrated in my published study on imagery, participants were able to use their imagination to activate their “pleasure brains” similarly to actual sexual stimulation. When our female participants imagined being penetrated pleasurably by a dildo (compared to thinking about having a pelvic exam with a speculum), the results looked very much like the “orgasm” brain. I often suggest to clients who are experiencing challenges with experiencing orgasm or enjoying sensations that they can practice “thinking” about tuning into sensations to strengthen the connections between the genitals and the sensory cortex.

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Last but not least: Sex is good for the brain!

Genital stimulation and orgasm result in tons of blood flow to the brain. Increased blood flow to the brain is generally a good thing! When our results were first reported in the media, some described orgasms as better for brain health than crosswords or Sudoku.

Another of my studies demonstrated that sexual stimulation and orgasm are associated with increased blood flow to many brain regions involved in sensation, movement, reward, and pleasure, as well as the regions involved in problem-solving, memory, language, and impulse control, the “higher” brain functions. We observed that genital stimulation and orgasm were associated with the activation of specific brain regions that release brain chemicals that feel good and are good for us, including dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, and our own internally manufactured mood-lifters and pain-relievers, the opioids. The feel-good afterglow has its roots in the chemistry of our brains.