M Hey everybody, it's me your old friend Josh, And for this week's s Y s K Selects, I've selected what happens in the brain during an orgasm. It's a tawdry, sexy look at things like oxytocin and vassip pressing and stuff like that. That's pretty good. Actually comes from Christmas time two thousand eleven, so there's a festive spirit around it and I hope you enjoy it tremendously. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from house Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me as always as Charles W Chuck Bryant. He's got a new haircut. Everybody looks really good. You can take my word for short, hind tight, Yeah, high and tight makes it stuff you should know. Chuck out his ears lowered. Have you ever heard that? And I don't think anyone under seventy has ever said that? Though, Yeah, well I just have. I took the cake. Yes, speaking of have you ever heard of the origin of the word cakewalk? The term cakewalk? I wrote a blog on it. You should check it out. Very surprising, I'll check it out, very eye opening. Again, tell us just go to the blog blog. Um, it's so Chuck. Are you ready, Chuck? Yes, I want to commend you. Okay, Um, just a day ago I woke up, checked my smartphone and found an email and you said, how about these first stuff you should know? And one of them was what happens in the brain during an orgasm? A week ago? I'm sorry last week? Yeah, what happens in the brain during an orgasm? And I thought, oh, man, I don't know about that one. Like, we've got some younger listeners, are we qualified to talk about this stuff? I got I started sweating. Um, it was just it was a wreck. It was a terrible way to wake up. Um. And I emailed you and was like are you sure? And you said something that I thought was this is why I'm commending you. You're like, look, man, we've done a lot of stuff on like really violent things which just off the top of my head, shrunken heads are step by step guide to shrinking heads or Jack the Cannibalism, Jack the Ripper, um, and we have we've done a lot of stuff about violent stuff. And you're like, and I don't want to just be able to talk about violent stuff but not be able to talk about sexuality like it's bad or worse than violence. I don't want to play ball with that scene. And that is very especially in America. We just celebrated Thanksgiving. We're a very puritanical country still, and that's absolutely true. Like violence is celebrated and okay, sexuality is hidden and it's not okay. Um, and yeah, I don't subject after that either. So I wanted to commend you for having that level of foresight insight every kind of site. Thanks and for um suggesting we do this. Thanks having said that, if you're a parent, if you're a younger listener, maybe should ask your parents. We're gonna be very mature about this, but it's not gonna be funny. But if if you uh, if you don't think you want your kid listening to uh anything about orgasms, then switch it off. Hey man, you're the parent, we're not. It's up to you to decide when you want your kid. Personally, I went to sex ed when I was either the fifth or sixth grade, So I learned about this stuff when I was like from a teacher. I was like seventh or eight, Really I was younger. Yeah, yeah, well you're you're very experienced. I remember one very funny thing that happened. I can't say it. I wish I could. Oh yeah, yeah, one kid in my class, I remember his name even It was he asked a very funny question that he wouldn't meaning to be funny. And but now that I'm older looking back, he was asking a legit question and it was. It was funny. Yeah. Um, that was a great story. My imagination is running wild right now. All right, let's get to this, chuck, Yeah, let's this is a really this is a bang up way to start a podcast. Like what happens in the brain during an orgasm. Defining orgasm from the Oxford English Dictionary. It's dry, it's stayed, it's like clinical, it's perfect. It was perfect. So let's do that the first one. There a sudden movement, spasm, contraction, or convulsion, a surge of sexual excitement. That's pretty much on the on the head there, right, Miriam Webster. Explosive discharge of neuromuscular tension at the height of sexual arousal, usually accompanied by the ejaculation of semen in the mail and by vaginal contractions in the female. And then famous smut peddler dr Alfred Kinsey. I'm sorry sex researcher. Researcher l for Kinsey. What was the name of the movie that Ray Finds played him in? Was it just Kinsey? It was Kinsey and it was Liam Neeson. Oh yeah, right, Finds Liam Um he called an orgasm can be likened to the crescendo or climax and sudden stillness achieved by an orchestra of human emotions. Also, it could be compared to an explosion of tensions or to sneezing, which Shane of Freeman, who wrote this article, took issue with. That's because it's not true. That's all myth, like if you sneeze five times, it's like an orgasm, or you'll have an orgasm. I don't think that's at all what he was saying. Well, no, but that is an a sense of tension and then really immediate relief that washes over your body following like a heavy sneeze. I think that's what he was saying. Yeah, but there's an urban myth that if you sneeze like five or seven times in a row. I don't think Kinsey Dalton urban myths. That was a scientist and saying since then, so the point of all this is that the orgasm, wow, it it is this um sensation that washes over your body. It's an explosion of tensions. It's like sneezing. Uh. It's accompanied by ejaculation and men um. There's all these physiological experience is going on, but all of it is centered in the brain. The point is the orgasm takes place in the brain, and thanks to the Wonder Machine, we now know pretty much what's going on in the brain. We don't we don't fully understand orgasms, but we have a much clearer picture than we did even ten years ago, twenty years ago. Did you ever hear the Billy Connolly, you know, the comedian his uh, He had one bit where he talked about when he learned first learning of an orgasm, when he was like, you know, twelve years old, like some older friend of his or his brother or cousin taught him like how to achieve it and what it was. And he's like, you know, I did it and it was the best thing ever. And he said, and then he came back to me the next day and it was like, you only get one thousand of those. He was like, the next week, I had used them all up. Well, I don't know if it was a thousand, then I don't even know if it's gonna make it on the air. We'll find out. So let's start clean. So um, okay, so we have let's let's talk about where all this starts takes place. Orgasms begin in the genitalia and they end in the brain, Yeah, pretty much, that's it. Or they begin in the genitalia, go to the brain and then come back to the genitalia maybe, or they begin in the brain and then go to the genitalia and then back to the brain. We're gonna get to the bottom of this. But essentially there's a lot of nerves involved in this, and there's um, you know, you're not going to be surprised to find that the genitalia, both male and female, are extremely sensitive nerve wise. Apparently the clitteress um has about eight thousand nerve endings just in itself. Uh. Comparatively speaking, the penis, a circumcised penis is I understand it has about four thousand endings and the whole thing that glands. Oh really yes, But and I didn't see this substantiated anywhere, but an uncircumcised penis supposedly has like twenty five thousand nerve endings in it. That's all propaganda. Is that brought to you by the Circumcision Society or the Anti circumcision was It was on one of those sites. And also that reminds me go listen to the circumcision podcast. That was a good one. Oh yeah, did you just want to remind yourself that we can cover these things without laughing? No? I just remember that we did circumcision, and then I thought you were just like, I gotta, I gotta do this. I gotta be able to say the word penis without laughing. Penis glands. All right? Uh so what happens is you got all these nerve endings um during intercourse and that climax that will be UM messages sent through these large nerves that run up your spinal cord except for the vagus nerve, which will is very important that we mentioned that very bypasses the spinal cord uh and to the brain and tells the brain, hey, this is great, this feels awesome. You want to you want to do this again? Right? And there's a different bundles are I guess stimulated in different areas, right, Yeah. So you've got like the hypogastric nerve um, which is located in the uterus and cervics and women, and in the prostrate in men. So if you tickle these areas you can conceivably achieve orgasm through the hypogastric nerve. There's the pelvic nerve transmits from the vagina and cervix and women obviously, and from the rectum of both sexes. Yeah, there's some overlap here. Uh, you go ahead and say that next one, Uh, the pedundle nerve. Yeah, that's pudendale or pudundle. I'm not sure which or pudundle, but either way, it's pu d E N d A L. Right, that's the clitterest in women and the scrotum and penis and men. So that's like kind of the that's the well established, long understood bundle of nerves, is it. Yeah, because the whole the whole concept that a woman can even have an orgasm is pretty recent. It's pretty new, like the last century. Yeah, as far as science goes. You go to Europe and asked some lady a hundred years ago, two hundred years she's gonna be like, what are you stupid? Yes, watch this they're like, oh, that's what that's called. We thought you just had the humors, right, Uh. And then you've got the vegas nerve, which we uh said bypasses the spinal cord. It transmits from the cervix, uterus and vagina and of the nerve fibers or sensory in the vegas nerve. So the vegas nerve is the money nerve um and it controls more than just orgasms. Apparently, if you have vegas nerve damage, you choke when you try to swallow liquids. We talked about that and something we've said vegas before, and it had to do with choking. I'll bet you it was either competitive eating or sword swallowing. Was the sword swallowing. Okay, So the vegas nerve is involved in swallowing as well as in umh orgasm. And I could only find obviously then if it's involved in swallowing, it's in men and women. But I could only find reference to the vegas nerve and orgasms in relation to female orgasms. But we'll get to that later. And the vegas nerves though, also, like you said, that's a pretty important nerve and it's very only recently discovered as far as orgasms go. But the big key to it is that it bypasses the spinal cord and goes straight to the brain, which is really really good news for a certain subset of the human population. Chuck a k A. Paraplegics, people who have suffered catastrophic spinal injuries, even people whose spines have been interrupted. Like their spines, their spinal cords are no longer connected top and bottom, they're totally paralyzed. They can still um come to climax, which is new because that was I mean wherever they said, you know, those days are over for you pretty much. But thank you Dr Barry Kamiseruk St. Kamiseruk, who we should just call this guy Dr Oh because he is the as far as I can sell, the pre eminent orgasm scientists. He and Whipple are he and Dr Whipple Beverly Beverly, That's that's what the paraplegic people call her. Of course they do. Uh. They are at Rutger's at rat gizz Go Scarlet Knights, and they did some tests on women in two thousand four who had severed spinal cords, and they found that they could feel stimulation in their cervits, they could reach orgasm, and they did the m r I and said, hey, it looks like this thing is bypassing. Yeah, they're saying this is real because the the m r I machine lit up like it's supposed to write, and like you said that, they showed that the areas of the brain that respond to the vegas nerve we're lighting up especially, and they're like, oh, it's the vegas nerve, which is I mean, we're not getting around. That is great news because that's one of the most upsetting parts I would imagine of spinal injury is to say goodbye to that part of your life, you know, to lose your sexuality like that. One of my um good friends dated a girl who was paralyzed from the waist down and she was able to, um, I have an orgasm, Thank you vegas nerve. Yeah, the vegas nerves basically proof that women are God's favorite. Oh yeah, no, actually, we'll see that's quite the opposite. That's right. I mean, the vegas nerves, it's it's pretty great for women, but overall, dumb lumbering men have it away better, as we'll see. Okay, so let's talk about the brain let's talk about the pleasure center a k a. Reward circuit. This is a pretty new Like the nineteen fifties is when they first kind of discovered this, and it it seems like we talked about this too. They did experiments on rats. They basically hooked them up in the skinner box and said, hey, if you go push this button, you're gonna get rewarded in a very pleasurable way in your brain. It was like cocaine or something, wasn't it. I think so? And they they found out that the rats really loved it, to the tune of about seven button pushes an hour, and they didn't eat anymore, didn't want water anymore, just there they just lay there and push this button. And it wasn't cocaine. They had electro's implanted in the brain's rewards, so it was going into stimulating everything. Oh but I think it had to do with a study on drugs because the reward center, like sexual arousal and the high from drugs is what a lot of it's going on there. Well, not only that, eating, laughing, hanging out with other people, basically anything that ensures our survival as a species or as an individual. UM the reward center has something to do with it. And the whole point of the reward center is we get this release of dopamine, this pleasurable um, this pleasurable chemical um that teaches us, Wow, this feels really good. I want to do that again so I will survive. These rats died of exhaustion. Though. Yeah, exac's so crazy, but that's where they discovered it in the fifties. And um, if we're gonna talk about the pleasure center, and we should mention a few specific areas, like the amygdala right regulates your emotions, and we talked about the brain a lot, so this is sort of rehashed. This is kind of like up there with fight or Flight, Like we talked about the reward circuit quite a bit. We do yeah because we like it. Well, it's a great circuit. I wish I had that button. I'd be pushing it seven hundred times an hour. Have to come along and be like, you need to stop the nucleus accumbents, which I don't think we've ever mentioned on the show. I think we have we have that controls the release of dopamine. It's part of the limbic system, and this plays a really big role in sexual arousal and like the high you feel from from certain drugs. The v t A or the ventral tegmental area that actually releases the dopamine. It takes its orders from the nucleus acumbens acumbins, the cerebellum controls your muscle function. Muscles are very important uh in an orgasm, and the pituitary gland. Here's this is a big one because it's not just dopamine, this pleasure that you sense, like you you just you know, it's not just pleasure. There's other stuff going on, Like there's tristesse crying after sex, Like that's not just pleasure. That's you're overwhelmed with emotions sometimes and that is thanks to our friend the pituitary gland, which releases beta endorphins that decreased pain, oxytocin which increased feelings of trust, vast oppressing which increases bonding UM and a lot of these same hormones and chemicals are released UM when you give birth, when a woman gives birth as well, which apparently forms bonds between mother and child. And also UM these things are released I think, like oxytocin is a lactation chemical as well, yeah, so both mother and child during breastfeeding, UM bond have Like basically, are you overwhelmed with the sense of like, I really like you and I get this sense you like me too, so let's hang out. Yeah. Oxytocin is called the hormone of love and actually means quick birth in Greek. And not only is it released during childbirth, but it sort of facilitates childbirth and um nipple stimulation. It is released and that's what makes you like date, which is pretty cool and calmness. It reduces your anxiety, makes you calm. So oxytocin up with oxytocin. Yeah, Investip pressing too has similar effects as well. So you've got all these chemicals flooding your body, You've got your reward circuit going. Yeah, and um, this is the orgasm basically, especially the female orgasm. We should say, like the male orgasm includes ejaculation, and it's been long understood what's going on there, right, But like it's pretty much an A to B relationship. Yeah. But like I said, like it was pretty recent, like the middle of last century that people that science came to really say like, okay, all right, so this is real. Women are just trying to get on board here, like they they really are experiencing something. And then in the late nineties and um, mid two thousand's, a group of Dutch researchers said, we're going to take this mri I. We're gonna stick people in this mri I. We're going to bring them to orgasm and then we're gonna watch what goes on in their brains. Yeah. Well, first they use the pet scan. Okay, right, I'm sorry. And actually, since you mentioned men, you told me in another email said this article is sexist because it only talks about women almost and I look that up. Apparently it's because the men's orgasm is so short it's hard to study it. Okay, so it's like boom, it's over, whereas a woman can have a prolonged orgasm, much easier to study that. All right, Um, to pet scan, so the pets can. But think about this is like the swing in his study. It's like King Kazy you know, um this is uh. These these test subjects were brought to orgasm the pet they were, their brains were watched with pet scans later on MRI s and what the Dutch researchers found was that there really aren't that many differences in the brains between men and women as far as the pleasure circuit goes. They saw all the stuff they expected to see. Um, apparently, the the brain if you take a snapshot of maybe the peak of it during orgasm or peak orgasm, and you compared it to a snapshot of the peak of a heroin dose, Uh, it looks the same, one of the Dutch researchers said. But there are differences between men's orgasms and women's orgasms as far as brain regions are concerned. And it's not really surprising what they found when you hear it. It's kind of intuitive, you know. Well. The other thing that they found was the same, though, was that the orbital orbital frontal cortex shut down for both. And that is the where you the seat of reason and behavioral control in your brain. So it's no surprise that that thing shuts down for both of us. You just completely lose control. You're enthralled by your orgasm. So the differences that you mentioned when a woman has sex, the I had this so right earlier. Peria caductile gray p G is activated and uh, it saysn't here it controls fight or flight. I got more that it provokes your defense responses and it's not necessarily controlling fightre flight. You know, is that right? Is it activating and or stimulating it? I just said what I saw said it provokes your defense responses, which is interesting. Okay, Well, I mean you can say defense responses, fight or flight. Yeah, let's she was part of it at least. Uh. The woman's brains show decreased activity in the migla and hippocampus. This one made sense to me. Deals with fear anxiety. So fear and anxiety are out the door all of a sudden. Yeah, which makes sense because for a woman to have and enjoy sex, and it takes um uh just physically speaking, it takes far more trust than it does for a man. Yeah. And emotionally right, you need to be relaxed exactly general. Uh. And then here was one that I thought was kind of interesting. UM. The part of the cortex associated with pain, the insular cortex, which UM is used to judge, Like them, the ferocity basically of pain, like just how bad pain is is active faded, So it's basically scanning, looking looking out for pain or judging the experience based on partially through the lens of pain. I think everyone's been there, whether it's like tickling or anything. We're like, oh, I hate that, I hate that, but I love that. I love that. Very fine line. Sometimes there's a very egalitarian interpretation checkers, thank you. Um faking an orgasm. Not surprisingly, of course, it doesn't use the same part of the brain. There's really bears almost no resemblance whatsoever. I didn't even think that should have been included. I didn't either, but I was mad in Shane of Freeman for being sexist at the time when I read that. Now that I look back on it, I still don't think it should have been included. That's right, um, so, Chuck. We've been giving all of the kudos and attention to people who have orgasms, no problem, right, mm hmm. There are people out there who, um are who who can't have orgasms, and yes, they have an orgasmia, which is an inability to achieve an orgasm. And one of the big culprits are s sr eyes serotonin as something reuptake inhibitor. What was the other s? I can't ever Yes, selector serotonin reuptake inhibitor, which keeps serotonin in your synapse is longer, so you cannot be depressed. The problem is it decreases the production the natural production of dopamine in your brain, and dopamine obviously is how we learn to enjoy and go do something like achieving an orgasm again. So fortunately, once people wean themselves off of S. S R EYES or start taking other drugs that increased dopamine production, usually that an orgasmia goes away. Usually not all the time, sadly, a very small percentage. I didn't get a number, but I did see that it was uncommon, thankfully. Uh post s s RI I. Sexual dysfunction means after you have weaned yourself off and you're producing dopamine regularly, you're still not able to achieve an orgasm. Right. They have no idea why because they're like, your dopamines working, Like what, what's your problem? And this is thanks to Dr oh again, right, I believe, So it's all over this stuff. Uh he um. That's one of the main reasons he's studying the orgasm, by the way, is not just to like you're like, oh cool, look at the brain. It's to help people that are an orgasmic or who suffered from persistent sexual arousal syndrome, which sounds horrible. Yeah, that means you're always sexually aroused, but you can't achieve orgasm right right, and like you're genuinely always sexually aroused. Um dr oh uh. Looked at women who have p S A s UM and put them in an m R I and looked at their brains, and their brains are showing like, yeah, I'm turned on right now. I'm turned on right now for no reason. I can't do anything about it, but I'm turned on right now. And then even if I try to have an orgasm, I can't take a curse. But the science supported it. Yeah, alright, right right, yeah, So I mean these people were physically sexually aroused and they couldn't do anything about it. He figured out that, um, they can use um like meditation techniques apparently works. Um basically calming techniques apparently hasn't has an impact on decreasing the sexual arousal. I think he's still trying to figure out the an orgasm apart. Josh, did you know that some people can orgasm from being touched in other parts of their body other than the genitalia. I did know that for instance, the nipples that happened. Sometimes they think that the sensations are transmitted to the same areas of the brain as the ones that come from your genitals, and so it's just the brain saying all right, I'll give you a little bonus there. You know, it's it's lighting up the right part of the brain. So here's an orgasm. Um. Apparently also knees knows people. Um, there are apparently women out there who can have orgasms just from imagery alone, no touching, no touching. Um. And again these people are in m r s. The brain is lighting up and they're saying, yep, science supports this woman is actually having an orgasm from a no touch encounter, which is the phantom limb thing. Is what really gets me? Yeah, do you want to talk about that? Yeah? I mean apparently some people can, do they exp Do they feel the orgasm in their phantom limb? Yes? Is that what it's not? It doesn't generate there. So you know how you have when you experience an orgasm, chuck, do you know how it's concentrated in your genitalia? Imagine if that sensation we're in your foot, like that's what felt good? Just as easily could right now. Imagine that your foot had been amputated years before, but you're still feeling your orgasm in your phantom foot. That's what they're talking about. That's nunety. Well they think what happened is um, there's a basically a map of your brain. The way we interpret it is as a maps called the cortical homunculous, and the cortical homunculous is like, Okay, this part of the body corresponds to this part of the brain, like the nerves here correspond here, and apparently if you suffer an amputation, your brain is like, well, I need to rewire myself and need to read map a little bit. So, um, I'm going to assign the sensation in the foot that's not there any longer to the genitalia, so the brain can become confused by the genitalia being stimulated that experience can be felt in the amputated foot, for example. That's what scientists think right now. You can also say that they have no idea what's going on. Most people are reporting having orgasms and phantom limbs. I think it's my new band name too, cortical homunculous. Oh, that's a good one. I've got some breaking news, Josh. This is a surprise for you. My friend Dr oh is at it again. And this was just released on the old ap wire last week. No, they kicked it up a notch and had ladies sit in the f m R I machine, which is even kicked up a notch from the regular m R I And they now have the first movie of the female brain as it approaches, experiences, and recovers from an orgasm. So they put this couple of ladies actually, and one of them talked about it. She did a little uh, I think she blocked about it. She said that one of the problems in doing this, obviously is you have to not move very much at all because it will disrupt the data. So they fitted her with a breathable plastic mesh helmet that was screwed into the bed to keep her still. And umdlo, how he's got an eyeswight chut for some reason. And um they told her to practice being still while you know, bringing yourself to climax. So she uh duct taped a kittie bell from her cats uh what do you call it? The collar onto her forehead and for two weeks practice bringing yourself to climax without ringing that bell. And she said, you know, I got good, good enough at it too. Successfully do this in the experiment, and uh, it was successful. So you can go on the internet now and look this up, um, and watch this video the animation plays. Um, you see the activity building up in the genitalia area of the century cortex like it should. Then, um, activity is spreading to the limbic system. Then it spreads to the limbic system, which is involved in emotion and long term memory. Then as the orgasm arrives, activity shoots up in two parts of the brain, the cerebellum in the frontal cortex that controlled the muscular tension. To all of a sudden, the muscles like contract really heavily, so that shoots up during the orgasm. Um, it reaches a peak in the hypothalamus and that's when it releases the oxytocin and all that good stuff and causes the uterus to contract. And I'm sorry, the nucleus acumbens is uh, that's also firing off during the peak, controlling the Yeah. And then afterwards everything like see, it just goes, you goes from all colorful back to the cold, dead blackness, the Derito's center starts becoming active. So check, there's a there's a very big question that we haven't really answered. We understand why men have orgasms, why do women have orgasms? Uh? Evolutionarily, but why? I mean, it doesn't make any sense. If it's an evolutionary adaptation like it is for men, then why is it so hard for some women to have orgasm? You? You know, ten of women will go through their entire lifetimes without ever experiencing an orgasm. That's a lot. So if it's evolutionary, that just that completely pulls the rug out of that whole idea, because then it should be really easy for women and men, right, Okay, So one of the ideas that's long been bandied about is a byproduct theory, like you know, why men have nipples because women have nipples all humans, so at some point during gestation or whatever, we still keep ours even though we don't need them and don't need nipples. But we're humans and women need nipples, So it's yourself makes sense. I don't use mine anymore. Um, they think that possibly the female orgasm is the same thing. Men and women are both humans. Men need to have orgasms, so women do as byproduct. In this really weird study that came out last year of twins UM, they studied same sex twins and opposite sex twins, and same sex twins had similar orgasm patterns, right opposite sex twins, who if it is just a byproduct UM, should have the same or similar orgasm patterns. It didn't hold up. So where does that leave us? We have no ideas confused. They think that it could possibly be an evolutionary remnant, like it was strategic to our survival at some point in the distant pass, and it's just a relic that kind of hangs around, which is kind of a depressing thought because then that means we're watching it as it's endangered and it's growing extinct, and that's sad, and I think that it needs to be snatched back from the grips of natural selection. Well, some things maybe just shouldn't be studied. Maybe you should just I don't know. I'm sure there's women out there saying just put those studies away. Yeah, let's just look at it as a big as a big bonus, right, And that's thanks, big guy. That's when dr Oe flicks the switch and the disco ball comes down from the ceiling. So if you want to know more about orgasms and see some pretty cool stock images of lit brains and things like that, you can type in what happens in the brain during an orgasm. You probably just type in orgasm in the search bar how stuffworks dot Com will bring up some interesting cool stuff. Sure, um and uh, I said search bar. I believe. So that means it's time for a listener mail. This is about gene patenting, I believe. And it's from Jim in New Jersey, Garden State. I love your patent podcast. Guys at Dovetail love that word very nicely with the Tech Stuff patent podcast. Yeah, that's what he says. I'm of the opinion that if you construct a new gene, then you can patent it. However, if you discover a gene already existing in nature, then I'm not sure that you should be able to patent it. This is just Jim's opinion. I like his opinion. Maybe you can patent the process of identifying the gene seems reasonable. Maybe you can patent a specific use of the gene, such as for testing, which you clearly covered as being controversial. However, you shouldn't be able to quote own the gene what if it has another use. It's a good point. Uh. And the epilogue on the Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Scalute describes a disturbing sin area. If you provide a sample of our DNA to a medical professional of your own DNA, uh, and it is found to have a mutation that's the foundation of the next wonder drug, you are entitled to nothing. Yeah, So legally your sample is considered trash unless you've like pre arranged some legal arrangement. That means you've abandoned it. That's like Henry Alas. Are you familiar with her? No, I've heard that though if we talked about this, Yes, she's she's kind of famous in this really weird way. She's like an African American lady from the forties or fifties, and um, somehow she donated like her blood or some tissue or something to science and it became the basis of like all scientific research after that. So, like all these breakthroughs and drugs and cancer blockers and all of this pharmaceutical research was based on this culture that's still around her line is still around why she's immortal and her face? Yes, and her family has gotten nothing from it. Interesting, and you know, companies have made hundreds of billions of dollars off of this lady's life, like her biology, and they've got nothing. I haven't read the book, but I've heard nothing but good things about it. I'll have to check that out. So that's from Jim in New Jersey. Thanks Jim. Thanks Henrietta las Okay said, I think forties or fifties to look that up. Um, and I'm it's probably even worse than that, I'm sure than the way I described it, but I will probably end up reading it. Okay, Okay, I'm done. I'm ready. Let's finish this thing. That was a good one. Well done. Well done to YouTube buddy who kept it very mature. Tip of the camp to YouTube sir offing it as well. Uh. If you want to contact me and Chuck Um, you can tweet to us at s Y s K podcast. You can visit us on Facebook at Facebook dot com Solis Stuff you Should Know, and you can send us an email at Stuff Podcast at how Stuff Works dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Visit how stuff works dot com. To learn more about the podcast. Click on the podcast icon in the upper right corner of our homepage. The how Stuff Works iPhone app has arrived. Download it today on iTunes.

M Hey everybody, it's me your old friend Josh, And for this week's s Y s K Selects, I've selected what happens in the brain during an orgasm. It's a tawdry, sexy look at things like oxytocin and vassip pressing and stuff like that. That's pretty good. Actually comes from Christmas time two thousand eleven, so there's a festive spirit around it and I hope you enjoy it tremendously. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from house Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me as always as Charles W Chuck Bryant. He's got a new haircut. Everybody looks really good. You can take my word for short, hind tight, Yeah, high and tight makes it stuff you should know. Chuck out his ears lowered. Have you ever heard that? And I don't think anyone under seventy has ever said that? Though, Yeah, well I just have. I took the cake. Yes, speaking of have you ever heard of the origin of the word cakewalk? The term cakewalk? I wrote a blog on it. You should check it out. Very surprising, I'll check it out, very eye opening. Again, tell us just go to the blog blog. Um, it's so Chuck. Are you ready, Chuck? Yes, I want to commend you. Okay, Um, just a day ago I woke up, checked my smartphone and found an email and you said, how about these first stuff you should know? And one of them was what happens in the brain during an orgasm? A week ago? I'm sorry last week? Yeah, what happens in the brain during an orgasm? And I thought, oh, man, I don't know about that one. Like, we've got some younger listeners, are we qualified to talk about this stuff? I got I started sweating. Um, it was just it was a wreck. It was a terrible way to wake up. Um. And I emailed you and was like are you sure? And you said something that I thought was this is why I'm commending you. You're like, look, man, we've done a lot of stuff on like really violent things which just off the top of my head, shrunken heads are step by step guide to shrinking heads or Jack the Cannibalism, Jack the Ripper, um, and we have we've done a lot of stuff about violent stuff. And you're like, and I don't want to just be able to talk about violent stuff but not be able to talk about sexuality like it's bad or worse than violence. I don't want to play ball with that scene. And that is very especially in America. We just celebrated Thanksgiving. We're a very puritanical country still, and that's absolutely true. Like violence is celebrated and okay, sexuality is hidden and it's not okay. Um, and yeah, I don't subject after that either. So I wanted to commend you for having that level of foresight insight every kind of site. Thanks and for um suggesting we do this. Thanks having said that, if you're a parent, if you're a younger listener, maybe should ask your parents. We're gonna be very mature about this, but it's not gonna be funny. But if if you uh, if you don't think you want your kid listening to uh anything about orgasms, then switch it off. Hey man, you're the parent, we're not. It's up to you to decide when you want your kid. Personally, I went to sex ed when I was either the fifth or sixth grade, So I learned about this stuff when I was like from a teacher. I was like seventh or eight, Really I was younger. Yeah, yeah, well you're you're very experienced. I remember one very funny thing that happened. I can't say it. I wish I could. Oh yeah, yeah, one kid in my class, I remember his name even It was he asked a very funny question that he wouldn't meaning to be funny. And but now that I'm older looking back, he was asking a legit question and it was. It was funny. Yeah. Um, that was a great story. My imagination is running wild right now. All right, let's get to this, chuck, Yeah, let's this is a really this is a bang up way to start a podcast. Like what happens in the brain during an orgasm. Defining orgasm from the Oxford English Dictionary. It's dry, it's stayed, it's like clinical, it's perfect. It was perfect. So let's do that the first one. There a sudden movement, spasm, contraction, or convulsion, a surge of sexual excitement. That's pretty much on the on the head there, right, Miriam Webster. Explosive discharge of neuromuscular tension at the height of sexual arousal, usually accompanied by the ejaculation of semen in the mail and by vaginal contractions in the female. And then famous smut peddler dr Alfred Kinsey. I'm sorry sex researcher. Researcher l for Kinsey. What was the name of the movie that Ray Finds played him in? Was it just Kinsey? It was Kinsey and it was Liam Neeson. Oh yeah, right, Finds Liam Um he called an orgasm can be likened to the crescendo or climax and sudden stillness achieved by an orchestra of human emotions. Also, it could be compared to an explosion of tensions or to sneezing, which Shane of Freeman, who wrote this article, took issue with. That's because it's not true. That's all myth, like if you sneeze five times, it's like an orgasm, or you'll have an orgasm. I don't think that's at all what he was saying. Well, no, but that is an a sense of tension and then really immediate relief that washes over your body following like a heavy sneeze. I think that's what he was saying. Yeah, but there's an urban myth that if you sneeze like five or seven times in a row. I don't think Kinsey Dalton urban myths. That was a scientist and saying since then, so the point of all this is that the orgasm, wow, it it is this um sensation that washes over your body. It's an explosion of tensions. It's like sneezing. Uh. It's accompanied by ejaculation and men um. There's all these physiological experience is going on, but all of it is centered in the brain. The point is the orgasm takes place in the brain, and thanks to the Wonder Machine, we now know pretty much what's going on in the brain. We don't we don't fully understand orgasms, but we have a much clearer picture than we did even ten years ago, twenty years ago. Did you ever hear the Billy Connolly, you know, the comedian his uh, He had one bit where he talked about when he learned first learning of an orgasm, when he was like, you know, twelve years old, like some older friend of his or his brother or cousin taught him like how to achieve it and what it was. And he's like, you know, I did it and it was the best thing ever. And he said, and then he came back to me the next day and it was like, you only get one thousand of those. He was like, the next week, I had used them all up. Well, I don't know if it was a thousand, then I don't even know if it's gonna make it on the air. We'll find out. So let's start clean. So um, okay, so we have let's let's talk about where all this starts takes place. Orgasms begin in the genitalia and they end in the brain, Yeah, pretty much, that's it. Or they begin in the genitalia, go to the brain and then come back to the genitalia maybe, or they begin in the brain and then go to the genitalia and then back to the brain. We're gonna get to the bottom of this. But essentially there's a lot of nerves involved in this, and there's um, you know, you're not going to be surprised to find that the genitalia, both male and female, are extremely sensitive nerve wise. Apparently the clitteress um has about eight thousand nerve endings just in itself. Uh. Comparatively speaking, the penis, a circumcised penis is I understand it has about four thousand endings and the whole thing that glands. Oh really yes, But and I didn't see this substantiated anywhere, but an uncircumcised penis supposedly has like twenty five thousand nerve endings in it. That's all propaganda. Is that brought to you by the Circumcision Society or the Anti circumcision was It was on one of those sites. And also that reminds me go listen to the circumcision podcast. That was a good one. Oh yeah, did you just want to remind yourself that we can cover these things without laughing? No? I just remember that we did circumcision, and then I thought you were just like, I gotta, I gotta do this. I gotta be able to say the word penis without laughing. Penis glands. All right? Uh so what happens is you got all these nerve endings um during intercourse and that climax that will be UM messages sent through these large nerves that run up your spinal cord except for the vagus nerve, which will is very important that we mentioned that very bypasses the spinal cord uh and to the brain and tells the brain, hey, this is great, this feels awesome. You want to you want to do this again? Right? And there's a different bundles are I guess stimulated in different areas, right, Yeah. So you've got like the hypogastric nerve um, which is located in the uterus and cervics and women, and in the prostrate in men. So if you tickle these areas you can conceivably achieve orgasm through the hypogastric nerve. There's the pelvic nerve transmits from the vagina and cervix and women obviously, and from the rectum of both sexes. Yeah, there's some overlap here. Uh, you go ahead and say that next one, Uh, the pedundle nerve. Yeah, that's pudendale or pudundle. I'm not sure which or pudundle, but either way, it's pu d E N d A L. Right, that's the clitterest in women and the scrotum and penis and men. So that's like kind of the that's the well established, long understood bundle of nerves, is it. Yeah, because the whole the whole concept that a woman can even have an orgasm is pretty recent. It's pretty new, like the last century. Yeah, as far as science goes. You go to Europe and asked some lady a hundred years ago, two hundred years she's gonna be like, what are you stupid? Yes, watch this they're like, oh, that's what that's called. We thought you just had the humors, right, Uh. And then you've got the vegas nerve, which we uh said bypasses the spinal cord. It transmits from the cervix, uterus and vagina and of the nerve fibers or sensory in the vegas nerve. So the vegas nerve is the money nerve um and it controls more than just orgasms. Apparently, if you have vegas nerve damage, you choke when you try to swallow liquids. We talked about that and something we've said vegas before, and it had to do with choking. I'll bet you it was either competitive eating or sword swallowing. Was the sword swallowing. Okay, So the vegas nerve is involved in swallowing as well as in umh orgasm. And I could only find obviously then if it's involved in swallowing, it's in men and women. But I could only find reference to the vegas nerve and orgasms in relation to female orgasms. But we'll get to that later. And the vegas nerves though, also, like you said, that's a pretty important nerve and it's very only recently discovered as far as orgasms go. But the big key to it is that it bypasses the spinal cord and goes straight to the brain, which is really really good news for a certain subset of the human population. Chuck a k A. Paraplegics, people who have suffered catastrophic spinal injuries, even people whose spines have been interrupted. Like their spines, their spinal cords are no longer connected top and bottom, they're totally paralyzed. They can still um come to climax, which is new because that was I mean wherever they said, you know, those days are over for you pretty much. But thank you Dr Barry Kamiseruk St. Kamiseruk, who we should just call this guy Dr Oh because he is the as far as I can sell, the pre eminent orgasm scientists. He and Whipple are he and Dr Whipple Beverly Beverly, That's that's what the paraplegic people call her. Of course they do. Uh. They are at Rutger's at rat gizz Go Scarlet Knights, and they did some tests on women in two thousand four who had severed spinal cords, and they found that they could feel stimulation in their cervits, they could reach orgasm, and they did the m r I and said, hey, it looks like this thing is bypassing. Yeah, they're saying this is real because the the m r I machine lit up like it's supposed to write, and like you said that, they showed that the areas of the brain that respond to the vegas nerve we're lighting up especially, and they're like, oh, it's the vegas nerve, which is I mean, we're not getting around. That is great news because that's one of the most upsetting parts I would imagine of spinal injury is to say goodbye to that part of your life, you know, to lose your sexuality like that. One of my um good friends dated a girl who was paralyzed from the waist down and she was able to, um, I have an orgasm, Thank you vegas nerve. Yeah, the vegas nerves basically proof that women are God's favorite. Oh yeah, no, actually, we'll see that's quite the opposite. That's right. I mean, the vegas nerves, it's it's pretty great for women, but overall, dumb lumbering men have it away better, as we'll see. Okay, so let's talk about the brain let's talk about the pleasure center a k a. Reward circuit. This is a pretty new Like the nineteen fifties is when they first kind of discovered this, and it it seems like we talked about this too. They did experiments on rats. They basically hooked them up in the skinner box and said, hey, if you go push this button, you're gonna get rewarded in a very pleasurable way in your brain. It was like cocaine or something, wasn't it. I think so? And they they found out that the rats really loved it, to the tune of about seven button pushes an hour, and they didn't eat anymore, didn't want water anymore, just there they just lay there and push this button. And it wasn't cocaine. They had electro's implanted in the brain's rewards, so it was going into stimulating everything. Oh but I think it had to do with a study on drugs because the reward center, like sexual arousal and the high from drugs is what a lot of it's going on there. Well, not only that, eating, laughing, hanging out with other people, basically anything that ensures our survival as a species or as an individual. UM the reward center has something to do with it. And the whole point of the reward center is we get this release of dopamine, this pleasurable um, this pleasurable chemical um that teaches us, Wow, this feels really good. I want to do that again so I will survive. These rats died of exhaustion. Though. Yeah, exac's so crazy, but that's where they discovered it in the fifties. And um, if we're gonna talk about the pleasure center, and we should mention a few specific areas, like the amygdala right regulates your emotions, and we talked about the brain a lot, so this is sort of rehashed. This is kind of like up there with fight or Flight, Like we talked about the reward circuit quite a bit. We do yeah because we like it. Well, it's a great circuit. I wish I had that button. I'd be pushing it seven hundred times an hour. Have to come along and be like, you need to stop the nucleus accumbents, which I don't think we've ever mentioned on the show. I think we have we have that controls the release of dopamine. It's part of the limbic system, and this plays a really big role in sexual arousal and like the high you feel from from certain drugs. The v t A or the ventral tegmental area that actually releases the dopamine. It takes its orders from the nucleus acumbens acumbins, the cerebellum controls your muscle function. Muscles are very important uh in an orgasm, and the pituitary gland. Here's this is a big one because it's not just dopamine, this pleasure that you sense, like you you just you know, it's not just pleasure. There's other stuff going on, Like there's tristesse crying after sex, Like that's not just pleasure. That's you're overwhelmed with emotions sometimes and that is thanks to our friend the pituitary gland, which releases beta endorphins that decreased pain, oxytocin which increased feelings of trust, vast oppressing which increases bonding UM and a lot of these same hormones and chemicals are released UM when you give birth, when a woman gives birth as well, which apparently forms bonds between mother and child. And also UM these things are released I think, like oxytocin is a lactation chemical as well, yeah, so both mother and child during breastfeeding, UM bond have Like basically, are you overwhelmed with the sense of like, I really like you and I get this sense you like me too, so let's hang out. Yeah. Oxytocin is called the hormone of love and actually means quick birth in Greek. And not only is it released during childbirth, but it sort of facilitates childbirth and um nipple stimulation. It is released and that's what makes you like date, which is pretty cool and calmness. It reduces your anxiety, makes you calm. So oxytocin up with oxytocin. Yeah, Investip pressing too has similar effects as well. So you've got all these chemicals flooding your body, You've got your reward circuit going. Yeah, and um, this is the orgasm basically, especially the female orgasm. We should say, like the male orgasm includes ejaculation, and it's been long understood what's going on there, right, But like it's pretty much an A to B relationship. Yeah. But like I said, like it was pretty recent, like the middle of last century that people that science came to really say like, okay, all right, so this is real. Women are just trying to get on board here, like they they really are experiencing something. And then in the late nineties and um, mid two thousand's, a group of Dutch researchers said, we're going to take this mri I. We're gonna stick people in this mri I. We're going to bring them to orgasm and then we're gonna watch what goes on in their brains. Yeah. Well, first they use the pet scan. Okay, right, I'm sorry. And actually, since you mentioned men, you told me in another email said this article is sexist because it only talks about women almost and I look that up. Apparently it's because the men's orgasm is so short it's hard to study it. Okay, so it's like boom, it's over, whereas a woman can have a prolonged orgasm, much easier to study that. All right, Um, to pet scan, so the pets can. But think about this is like the swing in his study. It's like King Kazy you know, um this is uh. These these test subjects were brought to orgasm the pet they were, their brains were watched with pet scans later on MRI s and what the Dutch researchers found was that there really aren't that many differences in the brains between men and women as far as the pleasure circuit goes. They saw all the stuff they expected to see. Um, apparently, the the brain if you take a snapshot of maybe the peak of it during orgasm or peak orgasm, and you compared it to a snapshot of the peak of a heroin dose, Uh, it looks the same, one of the Dutch researchers said. But there are differences between men's orgasms and women's orgasms as far as brain regions are concerned. And it's not really surprising what they found when you hear it. It's kind of intuitive, you know. Well. The other thing that they found was the same, though, was that the orbital orbital frontal cortex shut down for both. And that is the where you the seat of reason and behavioral control in your brain. So it's no surprise that that thing shuts down for both of us. You just completely lose control. You're enthralled by your orgasm. So the differences that you mentioned when a woman has sex, the I had this so right earlier. Peria caductile gray p G is activated and uh, it saysn't here it controls fight or flight. I got more that it provokes your defense responses and it's not necessarily controlling fightre flight. You know, is that right? Is it activating and or stimulating it? I just said what I saw said it provokes your defense responses, which is interesting. Okay, Well, I mean you can say defense responses, fight or flight. Yeah, let's she was part of it at least. Uh. The woman's brains show decreased activity in the migla and hippocampus. This one made sense to me. Deals with fear anxiety. So fear and anxiety are out the door all of a sudden. Yeah, which makes sense because for a woman to have and enjoy sex, and it takes um uh just physically speaking, it takes far more trust than it does for a man. Yeah. And emotionally right, you need to be relaxed exactly general. Uh. And then here was one that I thought was kind of interesting. UM. The part of the cortex associated with pain, the insular cortex, which UM is used to judge, Like them, the ferocity basically of pain, like just how bad pain is is active faded, So it's basically scanning, looking looking out for pain or judging the experience based on partially through the lens of pain. I think everyone's been there, whether it's like tickling or anything. We're like, oh, I hate that, I hate that, but I love that. I love that. Very fine line. Sometimes there's a very egalitarian interpretation checkers, thank you. Um faking an orgasm. Not surprisingly, of course, it doesn't use the same part of the brain. There's really bears almost no resemblance whatsoever. I didn't even think that should have been included. I didn't either, but I was mad in Shane of Freeman for being sexist at the time when I read that. Now that I look back on it, I still don't think it should have been included. That's right, um, so, Chuck. We've been giving all of the kudos and attention to people who have orgasms, no problem, right, mm hmm. There are people out there who, um are who who can't have orgasms, and yes, they have an orgasmia, which is an inability to achieve an orgasm. And one of the big culprits are s sr eyes serotonin as something reuptake inhibitor. What was the other s? I can't ever Yes, selector serotonin reuptake inhibitor, which keeps serotonin in your synapse is longer, so you cannot be depressed. The problem is it decreases the production the natural production of dopamine in your brain, and dopamine obviously is how we learn to enjoy and go do something like achieving an orgasm again. So fortunately, once people wean themselves off of S. S R EYES or start taking other drugs that increased dopamine production, usually that an orgasmia goes away. Usually not all the time, sadly, a very small percentage. I didn't get a number, but I did see that it was uncommon, thankfully. Uh post s s RI I. Sexual dysfunction means after you have weaned yourself off and you're producing dopamine regularly, you're still not able to achieve an orgasm. Right. They have no idea why because they're like, your dopamines working, Like what, what's your problem? And this is thanks to Dr oh again, right, I believe, So it's all over this stuff. Uh he um. That's one of the main reasons he's studying the orgasm, by the way, is not just to like you're like, oh cool, look at the brain. It's to help people that are an orgasmic or who suffered from persistent sexual arousal syndrome, which sounds horrible. Yeah, that means you're always sexually aroused, but you can't achieve orgasm right right, and like you're genuinely always sexually aroused. Um dr oh uh. Looked at women who have p S A s UM and put them in an m R I and looked at their brains, and their brains are showing like, yeah, I'm turned on right now. I'm turned on right now for no reason. I can't do anything about it, but I'm turned on right now. And then even if I try to have an orgasm, I can't take a curse. But the science supported it. Yeah, alright, right right, yeah, So I mean these people were physically sexually aroused and they couldn't do anything about it. He figured out that, um, they can use um like meditation techniques apparently works. Um basically calming techniques apparently hasn't has an impact on decreasing the sexual arousal. I think he's still trying to figure out the an orgasm apart. Josh, did you know that some people can orgasm from being touched in other parts of their body other than the genitalia. I did know that for instance, the nipples that happened. Sometimes they think that the sensations are transmitted to the same areas of the brain as the ones that come from your genitals, and so it's just the brain saying all right, I'll give you a little bonus there. You know, it's it's lighting up the right part of the brain. So here's an orgasm. Um. Apparently also knees knows people. Um, there are apparently women out there who can have orgasms just from imagery alone, no touching, no touching. Um. And again these people are in m r s. The brain is lighting up and they're saying, yep, science supports this woman is actually having an orgasm from a no touch encounter, which is the phantom limb thing. Is what really gets me? Yeah, do you want to talk about that? Yeah? I mean apparently some people can, do they exp Do they feel the orgasm in their phantom limb? Yes? Is that what it's not? It doesn't generate there. So you know how you have when you experience an orgasm, chuck, do you know how it's concentrated in your genitalia? Imagine if that sensation we're in your foot, like that's what felt good? Just as easily could right now. Imagine that your foot had been amputated years before, but you're still feeling your orgasm in your phantom foot. That's what they're talking about. That's nunety. Well they think what happened is um, there's a basically a map of your brain. The way we interpret it is as a maps called the cortical homunculous, and the cortical homunculous is like, Okay, this part of the body corresponds to this part of the brain, like the nerves here correspond here, and apparently if you suffer an amputation, your brain is like, well, I need to rewire myself and need to read map a little bit. So, um, I'm going to assign the sensation in the foot that's not there any longer to the genitalia, so the brain can become confused by the genitalia being stimulated that experience can be felt in the amputated foot, for example. That's what scientists think right now. You can also say that they have no idea what's going on. Most people are reporting having orgasms and phantom limbs. I think it's my new band name too, cortical homunculous. Oh, that's a good one. I've got some breaking news, Josh. This is a surprise for you. My friend Dr oh is at it again. And this was just released on the old ap wire last week. No, they kicked it up a notch and had ladies sit in the f m R I machine, which is even kicked up a notch from the regular m R I And they now have the first movie of the female brain as it approaches, experiences, and recovers from an orgasm. So they put this couple of ladies actually, and one of them talked about it. She did a little uh, I think she blocked about it. She said that one of the problems in doing this, obviously is you have to not move very much at all because it will disrupt the data. So they fitted her with a breathable plastic mesh helmet that was screwed into the bed to keep her still. And umdlo, how he's got an eyeswight chut for some reason. And um they told her to practice being still while you know, bringing yourself to climax. So she uh duct taped a kittie bell from her cats uh what do you call it? The collar onto her forehead and for two weeks practice bringing yourself to climax without ringing that bell. And she said, you know, I got good, good enough at it too. Successfully do this in the experiment, and uh, it was successful. So you can go on the internet now and look this up, um, and watch this video the animation plays. Um, you see the activity building up in the genitalia area of the century cortex like it should. Then, um, activity is spreading to the limbic system. Then it spreads to the limbic system, which is involved in emotion and long term memory. Then as the orgasm arrives, activity shoots up in two parts of the brain, the cerebellum in the frontal cortex that controlled the muscular tension. To all of a sudden, the muscles like contract really heavily, so that shoots up during the orgasm. Um, it reaches a peak in the hypothalamus and that's when it releases the oxytocin and all that good stuff and causes the uterus to contract. And I'm sorry, the nucleus acumbens is uh, that's also firing off during the peak, controlling the Yeah. And then afterwards everything like see, it just goes, you goes from all colorful back to the cold, dead blackness, the Derito's center starts becoming active. So check, there's a there's a very big question that we haven't really answered. We understand why men have orgasms, why do women have orgasms? Uh? Evolutionarily, but why? I mean, it doesn't make any sense. If it's an evolutionary adaptation like it is for men, then why is it so hard for some women to have orgasm? You? You know, ten of women will go through their entire lifetimes without ever experiencing an orgasm. That's a lot. So if it's evolutionary, that just that completely pulls the rug out of that whole idea, because then it should be really easy for women and men, right, Okay, So one of the ideas that's long been bandied about is a byproduct theory, like you know, why men have nipples because women have nipples all humans, so at some point during gestation or whatever, we still keep ours even though we don't need them and don't need nipples. But we're humans and women need nipples, So it's yourself makes sense. I don't use mine anymore. Um, they think that possibly the female orgasm is the same thing. Men and women are both humans. Men need to have orgasms, so women do as byproduct. In this really weird study that came out last year of twins UM, they studied same sex twins and opposite sex twins, and same sex twins had similar orgasm patterns, right opposite sex twins, who if it is just a byproduct UM, should have the same or similar orgasm patterns. It didn't hold up. So where does that leave us? We have no ideas confused. They think that it could possibly be an evolutionary remnant, like it was strategic to our survival at some point in the distant pass, and it's just a relic that kind of hangs around, which is kind of a depressing thought because then that means we're watching it as it's endangered and it's growing extinct, and that's sad, and I think that it needs to be snatched back from the grips of natural selection. Well, some things maybe just shouldn't be studied. Maybe you should just I don't know. I'm sure there's women out there saying just put those studies away. Yeah, let's just look at it as a big as a big bonus, right, And that's thanks, big guy. That's when dr Oe flicks the switch and the disco ball comes down from the ceiling. So if you want to know more about orgasms and see some pretty cool stock images of lit brains and things like that, you can type in what happens in the brain during an orgasm. You probably just type in orgasm in the search bar how stuffworks dot Com will bring up some interesting cool stuff. Sure, um and uh, I said search bar. I believe. So that means it's time for a listener mail. This is about gene patenting, I believe. And it's from Jim in New Jersey, Garden State. I love your patent podcast. Guys at Dovetail love that word very nicely with the Tech Stuff patent podcast. Yeah, that's what he says. I'm of the opinion that if you construct a new gene, then you can patent it. However, if you discover a gene already existing in nature, then I'm not sure that you should be able to patent it. This is just Jim's opinion. I like his opinion. Maybe you can patent the process of identifying the gene seems reasonable. Maybe you can patent a specific use of the gene, such as for testing, which you clearly covered as being controversial. However, you shouldn't be able to quote own the gene what if it has another use. It's a good point. Uh. And the epilogue on the Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Scalute describes a disturbing sin area. If you provide a sample of our DNA to a medical professional of your own DNA, uh, and it is found to have a mutation that's the foundation of the next wonder drug, you are entitled to nothing. Yeah, So legally your sample is considered trash unless you've like pre arranged some legal arrangement. That means you've abandoned it. That's like Henry Alas. Are you familiar with her? No, I've heard that though if we talked about this, Yes, she's she's kind of famous in this really weird way. She's like an African American lady from the forties or fifties, and um, somehow she donated like her blood or some tissue or something to science and it became the basis of like all scientific research after that. So, like all these breakthroughs and drugs and cancer blockers and all of this pharmaceutical research was based on this culture that's still around her line is still around why she's immortal and her face? Yes, and her family has gotten nothing from it. Interesting, and you know, companies have made hundreds of billions of dollars off of this lady's life, like her biology, and they've got nothing. I haven't read the book, but I've heard nothing but good things about it. I'll have to check that out. So that's from Jim in New Jersey. Thanks Jim. Thanks Henrietta las Okay said, I think forties or fifties to look that up. Um, and I'm it's probably even worse than that, I'm sure than the way I described it, but I will probably end up reading it. Okay, Okay, I'm done. I'm ready. Let's finish this thing. That was a good one. Well done. Well done to YouTube buddy who kept it very mature. Tip of the camp to YouTube sir offing it as well. Uh. If you want to contact me and Chuck Um, you can tweet to us at s Y s K podcast. You can visit us on Facebook at Facebook dot com Solis Stuff you Should Know, and you can send us an email at Stuff Podcast at how Stuff Works dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Visit how stuff works dot com. To learn more about the podcast. Click on the podcast icon in the upper right corner of our homepage. The how Stuff Works iPhone app has arrived. Download it today on iTunes.