WN: What are we learning about these non-genital orgasms?
Whipple: That they're real. We may have to reconsider what people define as orgasms, and not just have it defined in the genitals. We find that certain of the same brain areas are activated during orgasms experienced by imagery only (as during genital orgasms).
Komisaruk: It broadens our perspective on the potentialities of the body and brain. If we understand better how we can generate such pleasure from all different parts of our bodies, that increases our potential for sensory experience.
WN: Do you think there might come a time when orgasms really get detached from the genitals?
Komisaruk: It's happening right now. People have described orgasms through imagery, nose orgasms, knee orgasms. Although it sounds strange, the reports are believable. Now, people can show our book to someone who doubts it, and it can serve as a validation. Time will tell how prevalent non-genital orgasms are.
WN: You've found that even women with no feeling below the waist can have genital orgasms through genital stimulation.
Whipple: We've documented through our research that women who have complete transection -- interruption of the spinal cord -- can experience orgasms.
Komisaruk: The nerve pathway for that is via the vagus nerve, which can go directly from the cervix and uterus to the brain, passing outside the spinal cord. Women with spinal cord injuries told us that their doctors told them it was impossible to experience genital sensation, it was impossible to experience genital pleasure. They thought something was wrong with them when they experienced it, and they were troubled by it.
WN: What is the vagus nerve?
Whipple: "Vagus" means wanderer -- the nerve wanders through the body. Previously, it wasn't thought that it goes as far as the pelvic region. But our research and that of other laboratories is showing that it does in fact go to the cervix and uterus and probably the vagina. It carries the impulses from those regions, travels up through the abdomen, goes through the diaphragm, through the thorax (chest cavity), up the neck outside the spinal cord, and into the brain.
Komisaruk: Men and women have described an orgasmic experience from stimulation of the skin region around the level of the spinal cord injury. The injury creates an area of heightened sensitivity. They've told us if the right person stimulates that skin in the right way, it can produce very pleasurable sensation, including what they describe as orgasms.
We studied one such woman who had a spinal cord injury near her shoulders. She stimulated her neck with a vibrator, and she said that elicited an orgasm for her. We observed her blood pressure and heart rate, and they became elevated just as if it were a genital orgasm.
WN: Professor Whipple, you had a very emotional moment with one subject who had a spinal-cord injury.
Whipple: That particular woman had not tried any sexual stimulation, either with herself or a partner, in the two years since she had an injury. When she was in the laboratory, this woman experienced six orgasms through self-simulation. It was extremely emotional. She was crying, I was crying. She didn't think this was possible, and she was so pleased that she had volunteered to be a research subject. This had helped open up her essential pleasure again.
WN: You've both used fMRI and PET scans to monitor people while they're experiencing sexual pleasure. What have you learned from that?
Whipple: That some of the same brain areas are activated during orgasm in women with and without complete spinal cord injury, and also during orgasm from imagery alone, with no one touching their body, including the women themselves.
Komisaruk: Certain of the brain components -- the insula and cingulate cortex -- that are activated during orgasms in women are classically known to be activated during response to pain. We've seen that there is a strong inhibition of the response to pain during orgasm. What that leads us to think is there is some kind of very important interaction between the orgasmic experience and the pain experience.
Another brain component -- the nucleus accumbens -- which we see activated during orgasm in women has been shown by others to be activated by pleasure-producing drugs.
A third orgasm-activated brain component we see in women -- the paraventricular nucleus of the hypothalamus -- produces oxytocin, which is secreted in peak amounts during orgasm in women and stimulates uterine contractions.
