Women think their way to orgasm

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Women think their way to orgasm

Scientists have been intrigued by the claims of some women who insist that they can 'think themselves to orgasm', all by themselves.

A few years ago, researchers began working with brain imaging scanners to show what is actually happening in a woman's brain during orgasm.

"The pleasure centres of the brain associated with orgasm light up in women who think themselves to orgasm in exactly the same way as in women who orgasm through more conventional means," says Barry Komisaruk, who co-authored The Science Of Orgasm , reports the Daily Mail.

"The same centres don't light up when a woman mimics orgasm - only if it's the real thing."

Significantly, the women he examined may all have thought themselves into a state of bliss, but they all did it in different ways.

"Some women used a combination of breathing exercises and fantasy," he says. 'While others used their imagination and pelvic floor exercises."

"Some imagined erotic scenarios,' Komisaruk adds. "But others imagined very romantic scenes such as a lover whispering to them. Others pictured more abstract sensual experiences, such as walking along a beach or imagining waves of energy moving through their body."

Jill Morrison, a 40-year-old legal secretary, says: "I don't need to actually create a sexual fantasy in my mind - I just focus on wanting an orgasm, and my body responds." And, according to Jill, it wasn't just a one off either."

'Gradually, over the years, I have become much more adept at thinking myself to orgasm,' she explains.

What this tells us, says Prof Alan Riley, one of UK's leading sex experts, is that sexuality for women is more complicated and emotionally driven than experts had realised.

"There's been a lot of focus on the body and our physical responses," Riley says. "But for many people, and women in particular, the mind plays an even more important role."

This could be good news for the 40 per cent of women who claim to have difficulty reaching orgasm.

Komisaruk regularly sees women with this problem - and others who have the opposite problem with intense feelings of sexual desire that don't go away even when they do have orgasms.

He asks these women to lie in MRI scanners and coaches them to use mental techniques such as counting or visualisation to increase or decrease excitement.

This kind of research is important, says Komisaruk, because although orgasm "is intensely pleasurable", understanding it better is about much more than just pleasure.

"The female orgasm is a remarkable phenomena that has been shown to double heart rates, reduce sensitivity to pain, increase blood flow to the brain and increase feelings of joy, happiness and love," he says.

'Understanding what happens in our brains when we orgasm, could help us to develop better anti-depressants and better pain management drugs as well as increasing sexual satisfaction.'

"There's still a lot about female sexuality that we don't fully understand," he admits. "But with the introduction of MRI scanners, we're learning a lot more."

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It's official: Men are hornier than women

Innumerable studies have gone into finding out 'reality of the male sex drive', but now a new study claims that men really are 'hornier' than women.

Roy F. Baumeister at Florida State University, Kathleen Catanese at a Midwestern college and Kathleen Vohs, a professor of marketing, set out to find the truth, reports Oxford University Press.

They approached the problem like this. Imagine two women (or two men for that matter), such that one of them has truly a stronger sex drive than the other. What differences in preferences and behaviour would you expect to see between the two of them?

After months of reading and compiling results, the answer was clear. There is a substantial difference, and men have a much stronger sex drive than women. To be sure, there are some women who have frequent, intense desires for sex, and there are some men who don't, but on average the men want it more.

Every marker pointed to the same conclusion: Men think about sex more often than women do. Men have more sexual fantasies, and these encompass more different acts and more different partners.

Men masturbate more than women – much more. Masturbation is considered by sex researchers to be one of the purest measures of sex drive, because it is not much constrained by external factors (such as the need to find a partner, or the risk of pregnancy or disease).

Men take more risks and incur more costs for sex. They want sex more often than women, whether one is talking about young couples or people who have been married to the same person for forty years.

Men also want more different partners than women want, and men like a greater variety of sex acts than women do.

Men initiate sex often and refuse it rarely. Women initiate it much more rarely and refuse it much more often than men. Given an opportunity for sex, men leap at it, while women say no.

Women find it easier than men to go without sex. An adult woman who is between relationships can easily go for months, sometimes even years, hardly thinking of sex and not minding if she doesn't have it. Men go nuts without sex (or at least some do). A man who loses his girlfriend will often start masturbating by the next day or two.

Even when both men and women make a heartfelt, sacred vow of chastity, the men find it much harder to keep than the woman. Catholic priests have much more sexual activity than the nuns, even though both have committed themselves to the single standard of complete abstinence and have backed this up with a sacred promise in the context of the most important beliefs and values in their lives.

In short, every study and every measure fit the pattern that men want sex more than women. It's official: Men are hornier than women.

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