Newark, NJ, USA. Brain mapping research yielded data on female sexuality largely ignored for sixty years while confirming another profound equivalence of homologous female and male sexual organs.

It may seem obvious that stimulation of genital regions produces strong activation of various brain sites but until now it has only been quantified in males, not females.


Three separate and distinct sites are clustered in the same sensory cortical region in both females and males, showing direct analogues between their brains and genital stimulation. In humans, embryonic sex organs are initially formed as indifferent, but differentiate later into distinctly female or male forms. For example, the indifferent gonad differentiates into the female ovary or male testis.

Correction of sex bias in sex research

Researchers in the 1930's through the 1950's were able to localize in the male brain where all male sensations were represented, including male genitalia.

The same emphasis on physical observation did not occur in female sexual research.

Some sexuality experts have claimed that the major source of genital sensation is from the clitoris, with relatively little sensation produced by vaginal or cervical stimulation.

Data regarding the actual location of clitoral sensation were not studied until 2010, sixty years after the initiation of male studies.A new study in The Journal of Sexual Medicine provides rigorous observational data on the female stimulation of the vagina, cervix, clitoris, and nipples — each of which were shown to activate separate sites in the sensory cortex. Male stimulation resulted in activation of the same sensory cortical regions.



Barry R. Komisaruk, Ph.D., of Rutgers University is the author of numerous scientific papers on neurophysiology, pharmacology, the endocrinology of reproductive behavior, and analgesia in laboratory animals and humans.A point-to-point body map (called the homunculus) is a detailed diagram that shows where nerves from different parts of the body are represented in the brain. The brain sensation localization data is used to map the multiple locations in the brain where stimulation of different female genital regions are represented, and how these brain locations interrelate.

The result is a truer scientific understanding of female sexual function.

Using the homunculus diagram as a guide, researchers led by Barry R. Komisaruk, B.S., Ph.D., of Rutgers University, used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to map sensory cortical responses to clitoral, vaginal, cervical, and nipple self-stimulation in 11 healthy women, ages 23-56. The researchers also mapped responses to stimulation of the thumb and great toe.

Results found that stimulation of each of these genital regions in fact produces a significant and strong activation of specific and different sites in the sensory cortex.

Based on previously collected data, the genitals of men on the homunculus showed the same three representations clustered in the same sensory cortical regions.

Nipple self-stimulation in the females activated not only the chest region of the homunculus as expected, but also the genital region of the sensory homunculus, suggesting a neurological basis for women's reports that nipple stimulation feels erotic. This runs counter to some reports that depended on the observer's preconditioned expectations.

"Our findings demonstrate undeniably that there is a major input to the sensory cortex in response to stimulation of not only the clitoris, but of the vagina and cervix as well, which also evidently receive a significant and substantial sensory nerve supply," Komisaruk concludes. This lays the groundwork for an understanding of how genital stimulation spreads sequentially through the brain from initial activation of the sensory cortex to eventually activate the brain regions that produce orgasm.

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