A new scientific study published Monday has identified the brain region linked to genital touch in women, and found that it was more developed in volunteers who reported having more sex.
The research involved stimulating the clitorises of 20 adult females while their brains were scanned using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).
The researchers clarify that the paper, published in the journal JNeurosci, does not answer questions like whether having a larger area devoted to genital stimulation makes women more sensitive to touch.
It also doesn’t tell us whether having a more developing brain region devoted to genital touch prompts more intercourse, or whether more intercourse expands the region, like working out a muscle.
But the results could be used in future to target treatments for people who have, for example, been impacted by sexual violence, or have sexual dysfunction.
“It’s completely under studied, how the female genitals are represented in the somatosensory cortex in humans, and whether it has at all the capacity to change in relation to experience or use,” co-author Christine Heim, professor of medical psychology at Charite University Hospital in Berlin, told AFP.
The somatosensory cortex receives and processes sensory information from across the body. Each part of the body corresponds to a different area of the cortex, forming a representational map.
But until now, the part of the map that corresponds to the female genitals was a subject of debate.
Previous studies had sometimes placed it under the representation of the foot, others near that of the hip.
The reason was imprecise stimulation techniques – for example, during self or partner delivered manual stimulation, other parts of the body were touched at the same time, or the process triggered arousal, which blurred the results.
In 2005, other researchers were able to develop a technique that caused very localized tactile stimulation for penises, allowing them to find the precise region devoted to this area in males. But there was no similar breakthrough for females.
For the new study, 20 women in good health between the ages of 18 and 45 were selected.
For stimulation, a small round object specifically designed for the task was applied above the underwear at the level of the clitoris.
More than 50 percent of Chinese aged 18-25 are reported to have no sex life in a recent survey. Photo: VCG
