The female clitoris is a mystery to many… but it still is, in part, to many scientists. Hence, any new revelation in this regard is welcome and is useful for the search for improvements in the knowledge of sexual functionA new scientific study published on Monday identified the region of the brain linked to genital touch in women and discovered that this area it was more developed in those volunteers who reported having more sexual relations.
The research involved stimulating the clitorises of 20 adult women while their brains were scanned using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).
The researchers clarify that the article, published in the Journal of Neuroscience, does not answer questions such as whether having a larger area dedicated to genital stimulation makes women more sensitive to touch.
It also doesn’t tell us whether having a more developed region of the brain devoted to genital touch drives more sex, or whether more sex expands that region, such as by exercising a muscle. But the results could be used in the future to target treatments for people who, for example, have been affected by sexual violence or suffer from sexual dysfunction.
“It is completely understudied, how the female genitalia are represented in the somatosensory cortex in humans, and whether it has the ability to change in relation to experience or use,” co-author Christine Heim, professor of medical psychology at Charité University Hospital of Berlin.
body map
The somatosensory cortex receives and processes sensory information from throughout the body. Each part of the body corresponds to a different area of the cortex, forming a representational map. But until now, the part of the map that corresponds to the female genitalia was an unexplored topic and open to debate.
Thus, previous studies had sometimes placed it under the representation of the foot, others near the hip. The reason seems to be that imprecise stimulation techniques were used; for example, during manual stimulation by self or partner, other body parts were touched at the same time, or arousal was triggered by the process, which blurred the results.
In 2005, other researchers were able to develop a technique that caused very localized tactile stimulation to penises, allowing them to find the precise region dedicated to this area in males. But there was no similar advance for women.
Brain imaging results confirmed that the somatosensory cortex represented the female genitalia along with the hips.
For the new study, 20 women in good health between the ages of 18 and 45 were selected. For stimulation, a small round object designed specifically for the task was applied to the underwear at the level of the clitoris. The jets of air caused the membrane of the device to vibrate slightly.
The approach was designed to be “as comfortable as possible” for volunteers, said co-author John-Dylan Haynes of the Berlin Center for Advanced Neuroimaging at Charité. Subsequently, they were stimulated eight times, for 10 seconds each time, interspersed with 10 seconds of rest. The same device was used on the back of the right hand as a control.
The brain imaging results confirmed that the somatosensory cortex represented the female genitalia next to the hips, as in men, but the precise location varied for each woman analyzed.
Plasticity of this brain region according to sexual activity
Next, the researchers investigated whether this area had different characteristics depending on the sexual activity of the volunteer in question. To do this, they asked the 20 women about the frequency of their sexual relations during the past year, as well as since the beginning of their sexual life.
Then, for each of them, the researchers determined the ten most activated points in the brain during stimulation and measured the thickness of those areas. “We found an association between frequency of genital intercourse and individually mapped genital field thickness,” Heim said. The more sex, the larger the region.
Although the authors state that more studies are needed to clarify if more sexual impulses are linked to a greater expansion of this area, there are indications from previous research that this is the case. First, it is well established that the more certain parts of the brain are used, the larger they become: this is known as brain plasticity. For example, the hippocampus region of the brain of London cabbies expands with the experience of navigation.
Second, previous animal studies showed that stimulation of the genitalia of rats and mice did lead to an expansion of the area of the brain corresponding to these organs. Although that research also did not determine whether a larger area resulted in better perception.
But Heim herself had previously shown in a 2013 study that people who had experienced traumatic sexual violence had thinning of the areas of the brain dedicated to the genitals. “We speculated at the time that this might be the brain’s response to limit the harmful perception of abuse,” she said.
The paper’s lead author hopes her research will help inform future therapies aimed at rehabilitating this region among abuse survivors.
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