This MRI Scan Shows Exactly What’s Happening In Your Brain When You’re Orgasming

You may think you have more interesting things to focus your attention on during sex than your neurological functions, but this video might change your mind.

Scientists at Rutgers University have recorded an MRI scan of exactly what’s going on up there in your brain while you’re getting busy down there, and it’s pretty cool indeed.

The one-minute video, which shows brain activity before, during and just after orgasm, was published by Rutgers at part of a report about which nerve pathways are used for genital stimulation to reach the brain. And even if you’re not a neuroscientist, the visuals are pretty incredible:

Rutgers’ video was taken during a study on five women who had suffered spinal injury leaving them paralysed from the waist down. The fact that three of the women were able to reach orgasm is actually pretty significant, as it proves that in women with certain spinal cord injuries, genital stimulation can instead causes activation of an alternative nerve pathway through the vagus nerve, a long cranial nerve that had never been shown to extend into the pelvis in humans.

“It was very emotional,” neuroscientist Barry R. Komisaruk recalled in the study, adding that some of the women in the study had cried. “It was a surprise to me and them because their doctors had told them after their injury that their sex life is over; they wouldn’t be able to feel genital sensations.”

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