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Topic: Female orgasm as proof of God (Read 2046 times) |
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Blunderov
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"We think in generalities, we live in details"
  
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RE: virus: Female orgasm as proof of God
« Reply #15 on: 2005-06-25 08:50:07 » |
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[Blunderov] More on the female orgasm.
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-sex-in-the-brain,0,2
827657.story?coll=ny-main-tabheads1&track=mostemailedlink
Brain Areas Shut Off During Female Orgasm
By EMMA ROSS
AP Medical Writer
June 21, 2005, 8:35 PM EDT
COPENHAGEN, Denmark -- New research indicates parts of the brain that
govern fear and anxiety are switched off when a woman is having an
orgasm but remain active if she is faking.
In the first study to map brain function during orgasm, scientists from
the Netherlands also found that as a woman climaxes, an area of the
brain governing emotional control is largely deactivated.
"The fact that there is no deactivation in faked orgasms means a basic
part of a real orgasm is letting go. Women can imitate orgasm quite
well, as we know, but there is nothing really happening in the brain,"
said neuroscientist Gert Holstege, presenting his findings Monday to the
annual meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and
Embryology.
In the study, Holstege and his colleagues at Groningen University
recruited 11 men, 13 women and their partners.
The volunteers were injected with a dye that shows changes in brain
function on a scan. For men, the scanner tracked activity at rest,
during erection, during manual stimulation by their partner and during
ejaculation brought on by the partner's hand.
For women, the scanner measured brain activity at rest, while they faked
an orgasm, while their partners stimulated their clitoris and while they
experienced orgasm.
Holstege said he had trouble getting reliable results from the study on
men because the scanner needs activities lasting at least two minutes
and the men's climaxes didn't last that long. However, the scans did
show activation of reward centers in the brain for men, but not for
women.
Holstege said his results on women were more clear.
When women faked orgasm, the cortex, the part of the brain governing
conscious action, lit up. It was not activated during a genuine orgasm.
Even the body movements made during a real orgasm were unconscious,
Holstege said.
The most striking results were seen in the parts of the brain that shut
down, or deactivated. Deactivation was visible in the amygdala, a part
of the brain thought to be involved in the neurobiology of fear and
anxiety.
"During orgasm, there was strong, enormous deactivation in the brain.
During fake orgasm, there was no deactivation of the brain at all.
None," Holstege said.
Shutting down the brain during orgasm may ensure that obstacles such as
fear and stress did not get in the way, Holstege proposed. "Deactivation
of these very important parts of the brain might be the most important
necessity for having an orgasm," he said.
Donald Pfaff, professor of neurobiology and behavior at Rockefeller
University in New York, said the interpretations were reasonable. "It
makes poetic sense," said Pfaff, who was not connected with the
research.
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Blunderov
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Posts: 3160
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"We think in generalities, we live in details"
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RE: virus: Female orgasm as proof of God
« Reply #16 on: 2005-07-05 14:20:20 » |
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[Blunderov] More on the female orgasm. And EP too!
Best Regards
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=00022EBD-51CA-12C4-91CA83414B
7F0000&ref=sciam&chanID=sa004
Psyching Out Evolutionary Psychology: Interview with David J. Buller
This philosopher of science rejects claims of a universal human nature
<snip>
DB: I haven't read the book yet. However, I've read her earlier work on
female orgasm, I've seen her give a couple of talks on her research, and
I've discussed her work with her briefly. I'm not completely convinced
that Lloyd is right that female orgasm has no evolutionary function,
although my mind could change once I read the whole book. She
presupposes that male orgasm has a direct reproductive function--namely,
to inseminate. But this conflates ejaculation and orgasm. Insemination
is the function of ejaculation. Ejaculation and orgasm are actually
distinct phenomena subserved by separate and dissociable physiological
mechanisms. Ejaculation is all that's necessary for the function of
insemination. So there's a problem about male orgasm: Why has it
evolved? Clearly, the mechanisms subserving the sensation of orgasm are
the evolutionary latecomers. So at some point in our evolutionary
history, well before the emergence of Homo sapiens, there may have been
non-orgasmic ejaculators and orgasmic ejaculators. Given where we've
arrived, clearly the latter outreproduced the former. One possible
reason is that orgasms drove the orgasmic ejaculators to have sex more
often in order to induce the pleasurable sensation. The common early
developmental pathway of males and females would have endowed females
with the mechanisms for orgasm as well, as Lloyd herself shows,
following [evolutionary psychologist] Donald Symons. Once so endowed,
orgasm could have performed the same motivational role in women. In that
case, in both sexes, orgasm would be an adaptation for a higher
frequency of sex--hence, presumably, a higher rate of offspring
production relative to our ancestors without the pleasurable sensation
of orgasm. Of course, this is highly speculative, and--to repeat--I
haven't made my way through all of Lloyd's arguments. But at first
glance, I'm skeptical.
.JRM: What value can philosophers add to science?
DB: I have no doubt that some readers are going to say that I've brought
nothing to these issues, because philosophers should stick to what they
know--namely, nothing. And there's an extent to which I agree with them.
Philosophy as a field is not a body of knowledge to be known. What we
philosophers do get trained for is analysis of reasoning. I think
philosophers can contribute quite a bit to ongoing scientific research
in this respect, becausc theory and evidence aren't tightly and
obviously connected to one another. Evidence usually only speaks to
theory after some tortured chain of reasoning to connect the two. And
it's that tortured chain of reasoning [that] philosophers are trained to
look at with a critical eye.
I'm not telling the world that everything in my book is right, so
everyone should stop listening to evolutionary psychologists. I propose
something different: Inform yourselves. Please. Go out and read the
stuff by evolutionary psychologists and read my book, then make up your
own minds about what you think is right and wrong. I think people should
look at both sides before deciding. </snip>
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