Back in New Jersey, Komisaruk is trying to apply some of this new brain knowledge. He is studying two extremes: women who complain of constant sexual arousal and find no relief in orgasms and those who can never have an orgasm. He hopes to reveal where their brains are "stuck" and help them alter their brain patterns.
The setup is simple: Women lying in an MRI scanner watch a computer display of their brain activity. Scans of women with persistent genital arousal disorder reveal unusually high activation in regions that respond to genital stimulation. It shows, Komisaruk says, that the women's complaints are real. Their brain thinks the genitals are constantly being stimulated.
Komisaruk is coaching them to use neuro-feedback -- mental strategies such as counting or imagery -- to alter their brain activity. If they see those genital brain regions cooling seconds after their mental exercises, they can refine their techniques and eventually do it without the scanner, whenever these brain areas again slip into hyperdrive.
Fire rather than ice might be the trick for anorgasmic women, whom Komisaruk plans to study next. For some women, clitoral stimulation might travel along the spinal cord but then is somehow blocked so they don't travel to the brain regions they need to.
"We want to see if there's a blockage somewhere and if that blockage is susceptible to a change in mental activity," he says. Anorgasmic women might practice in a lab with a vibrator, trying to mimic other women's successful brain patterns.
The brain is surprisingly plastic, Komisaruk says. Witness the curious case -- described by UC San Diego neuroscientist Dr. V.S. Ramachandran -- of the man who had orgasms in his phantom foot.
When the man's foot was amputated, cells in the "foot" part of the brain were suddenly deprived of stimulation. They died, leaving prime cerebral real estate vacant.
Then, like an opportunistic roommate, a neighboring region in the man's brain likely sent sprouts to commandeer the vacated landscape. That region? One that processes input from penis and vulva.
The result: The man felt foot-sized orgasms in a foot he no longer had.
Nothing quite so drastic is expected to occur with a bit of orgasmic neural training in the lab, Komisaruk says. But the anecdote points out that the brain is indeed capable of some very imaginative tricks.
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health@latimes.com
