Having sex can flavor our nights, and days, with sweet pleasure and excitement, relieving stress and worry. And, of course, sex has been key to ensuring that the human race lives on.
Having sex isn’t just a surefire way to feel closer with your partner and enjoy some time connecting with your own body, but sex also has some pretty powerful benefits for your mental health, as researchers have studied over time.
It’s true that sex is good for the body and brain, and can have both immediate effects as well as long-term benefits, especially as you get older.
The female brain and orgasm
Though male sexual response has been extensively studied, fewer studies have been done on the effects of sexual response on the female brain.
In a study of the female orgasm that was conducted last year, scientists from Rutgers University in Newark, NJ, monitored the brain activity of 10 female participants as they achieved the peak of their pleasure either by self-stimulation or by being stimulated by their partners.
The regions that were “significantly activated” during orgasm, the team found, included part of the prefrontal cortex, the orbitofrontal cortex, the insula, the cingulate gyrus, and the cerebellum.
These brain regions are variously involved in the processing of emotions and sensations of pain, as well as in the regulation of some metabolic processes and decision-making.
Music and dance may be the only things that come close to sexual interaction in their power to entrain neural rhythms and produce sensory absorption and trance.
That is, the reasons we enjoy sexual experiences may overlap heavily with the reasons we enjoy musical experience, both in terms of proximate (i.e. neural entrainment and induction of trance-like states) and ultimate (i.e. mate choice and bonding) levels of causation.
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