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What Happens To The Brain When You Have A Migraine – The human brain is perhaps the most important part of our body. The brain is responsible for many different important functions of the body and is extremely complex.
The brain is truly an organ. The approximately 3-pound adult human brain is composed of complex parts, all of which perform important functions. The brain contains about a hundred billion neurons and uses 20% of the total blood and oxygen in our body. With all the complexity of the human brain, different injuries are bound to affect it in very different ways.
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An example of this is seen in frontal lobe injuries. The frontal lobe, as its name suggests, is located at the front of the brain. Injury to the frontal lobe has a variety of effects, from affecting impulses and behavior to general foggy memory.
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Another case of this is seen when a person has an injury to the temporal lobe. The temporal lobe is located just below the frontal lobe and above the brain stem. If a person has an injury to the temporal lobe, they may have problems with memory, language comprehension, organization, and more.
While some of these problems may seem less serious than others, the common thread is that an injury to any part of your brain can have consequences, whether minimal or severe. Be sure to read through the rest of the infographic to see exactly how each brain injury will affect you! We keep our journalism free because we believe everyone deserves to understand the world in which they live. Reader support helps us do that. Can you join in to help keep it free for all? ×
Orgasm is a truly altered state of consciousness, however fleeting. And most people (though not all) experience them on a regular basis.
So it’s a little surprising that we rarely talk about orgasms publicly — and scientifically, we know so little about them.
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“There’s a lot we still don’t understand about orgasm,” says Barry Komisaruk, a Rutgers neuroscientist who studies the topic. As Julia Heiman, a sex researcher at Indiana University, once told New Scientist: “The amount of speculation versus actual data about both the function and value of orgasm is remarkable.”
Komisaruk, working with legendary retired sex researcher Beverly Whipple, spent decades asking men and women to lie down in an fMRI machine and bringing them to orgasm. Other labs have used PET scanners and other techniques to see what’s going on inside the brains of people with the disease.
All of these studies – which aim to establish baseline knowledge that could eventually help people who have difficulty reaching orgasm – are small and their findings may not hold true. with everyone. But they discovered some surprising observations about how orgasms work.
Komisaruk’s experiments have shown that in both men and women approaching orgasm, a series of predictable events occur in the brain. It should come as no surprise that sexual arousal results in activation of brain regions known to be involved in our tactile processing.
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Sensory cortical areas respond to stimulation to the clitoris, cervix, and vagina. (Komisaruk et al. 2011)
However, from there, some brain regions appear to be unrelated – such as the limbic system (involved in memory and emotions), the hypothalamus (involved in unconscious body control) and the cerebral cortex. prefrontal (involved in judgment and problem solving) – involved. in, one after another shows a higher level of activation.
By the time you actually reach orgasm, “more than 30 major brain systems are activated,” says Komisaruk. “It’s not a local, isolated event. There’s no ‘orgasm center’. It’s everywhere.”
Although there are some clear physiological differences between male and female orgasms (female orgasms last about 20 seconds, instead of 10, for example), experiments at the Rutgers lab and elsewhere have shown that in the brain, an orgasm is an orgasm, regardless of someone’s sexuality.
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“We see all the same regions being activated,” Komisaruk said. PET scanning research conducted at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands reached similar conclusions.
Komisaruk points to an old study from the 1970s that suggested this commonality before fMRI or PET scanners were even invented. In it, researchers asked participants to write down descriptions of the feeling of orgasm. They then eliminated all mentions of specific body parts and asked a panel of 70 psychologists, sex therapists, and gynecologists to determine whether each description was written by the group. man or woman. The judges – whether male or female – cannot identify them at random.
Previous experiments conducted by Whipple and Komisaruk showed that orgasm and sexual stimulation in general can cause people’s pain tolerance to increase.
The pair determined this by using a machine that squeezes a person’s finger with increasing force until it hurts. When women were asked to masturbate, their pain tolerance increased by nearly 50%. Whipple and Komisaruk also tested various distractions for control and determined that masturbation not only distracted women but actually affected their perception of pain.
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Whipple’s later research even suggested that vaginal stimulation during childbirth increases pain tolerance – and that the pain of childbirth would be worse without this mechanism.
All this is somewhat surprising because the researchers’ fMRI scans found increased activity in a pair of brain regions (the insular cortex and anterior cingulate cortex) known to be involved in feel pain. But Komisaruk suspects the scans may actually show inhibitory activity in these areas – meaning neurons acting as part of a network that suppresses the perception of pain, rather than transmitting It.
PET scanning experiments by the University of Groningen team also showed significantly reduced activity in the amygdala, a brain region that is important for our perception of fear, and the orbitofrontal cortex, an area involved in control. impulse control. Lead author Gert Holstege interpreted this as evidence that at the moment of orgasm, fear awareness and impulse control are completely shut down.
But there may be other explanations, especially since PET scans measure brain activity over several minutes. “I think what they are seeing is simply the arousal system shutting down after orgasm,” says Kim Wallen, an Emory psychologist who has conducted research on orgasm.
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Some people have the ability to reach orgasm with just their thoughts – they don’t need to stimulate their body or have sex to achieve it. Whipple and Komisaruk have seen several women achieve this inside an fMRI machine.
“Their brain activity was very similar to women who orgasmed through physical self-stimulation,” Komisaruk said. This even includes increased activity in the sensory cortex, the area that primarily responds to touch. “It turns out that just thinking about stimulation is a very effective way to stimulate this area,” he says.
There’s a big myth originating from the Kinsey Report (a series of reports published in the 1950s by male sex researchers), which claims that women can only orgasm when stimulated directly into their vagina. clitoris. But although it is the source of most female orgasms, some women have long reported experiencing vaginal orgasms as well.
Whipple and Komisaruk have discovered new evidence for this. They recruited participants who had suffered spinal cord ruptures (due to accidents), leaving them paralyzed below the waist and preventing any transmission of sensation from their clitoris. However, these women were still able to orgasm, and fMRI suggested that their vagus nerve – which connects the brain to the uterus and cervix but runs outside the spinal cord – was responsible for transmitting stimulation from the vagina. religion.
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The vagus nerve, which carries sensation from the vagina and cervix and runs out to the spinal cord, may also contribute to orgasm. (Georgia Highlands College)
This does not mean that there is a specific organ called the “G-spot” (its existence remains hypothetical), but it does confirm that stimulation to areas other than the clitoris is possible. leading to orgasm.
Much of this work is driven by the fact that a sizable proportion of people – disproportionately but not exclusively women – have difficulty reaching orgasm.
Scientists still do not fully understand the causes of this condition, officially called anosmia. Many cases can simply be the result of someone never getting the stimulation they need (from their partner or themselves), which is why some sex coaches have had success with Masturbation class for people with chronic anorexia. A lot of people taking certain antidepressants (specifically selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors or SSRIs) also have difficulty reaching orgasm due to side effects and it has been found that for For both men and women, Viagra can be an effective treatment.
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But there are also others who experience this problem with no apparent cause. Research on twins suggests that genetics may be involved.
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