What does a woman’s brain look like while she’s having an orgasm?

Apparently, its like a multi-layered, multicoloured abstract or neon sign that flashes on and off. Or so an animated video of a woman’s brain as she reaches orgasm using brain scan images reveals.

VIDEO: Watch a woman’s brain as she approaches, reaches and recovers from an orgasm.

It’s all part of research to understand how the brain and sexuality work, said Barry Komisaruk, a psychology professor at Rutgers University who presented the video at the Society for Neuroscience annual meeting in Washington.

The brain as it reaches and experiences orgasm is like a cascading wave of brain activity, he said.

To do the animation, Komisaruk had the brain of one of his PhD students Nan Wise scanned by a functional magnetic resonance imaging scanner as she stimulated herself.

The researchers measured brain activity changes in more than 80 separate regions of the brain in images taken every two seconds. The activity was measured by the utilization of oxygen levels in the blood. In the video levels of oxygen are displayed as dark red for the lowest activity to yellow/white for the highest.

In the seven-minute video the brain at orgasm is almost entirely illuminated in yellow, which indicates that most brain systems become active at orgasm, Komisaruk said.

“What we’ve been studying is the sequence of activation and which components are activated, beginning with the genital sensory input to the sensory cortex and then spreading to other major brain systems,” he said.

“The purpose of the animation is to give a dynamic image of how the activity spreads over the brain over time. You start out with localized stimulation and it spreads out and recruits other brain neurons, reaching a crescendo.”

Komisaruk hopes that by studying brain activity and orgasm he other researchers will begin to then understand what goes wrong for both men and women when they can’t orgasm and hopefully come up with cures for sexual dysfunction.

So what happens to the brain during sexual stimulation, arousal and orgasm? Here’s the short explanation offered up by Komisaruk. After genital stimulation floods the sensory cortex, the limbic system — which is involved in emotional and physiological responses — is turned on.

Then activity spreads to the two parts of the brain called the cerebellum and the frontal cortex. Then orgasm activity reaches its peak in the hypothalamus which secretes oxytocin which causes pleasurable feelings and the uterus to contract. Activity also peaks in the nucleus accumbens, which is an area also associated with pleasure and reward.

“It’s really a symphony of physiological responses,” he said.

So much for the mystery of sex, it would seem.

Not so, said Komisaruk.

“There’s still tremendous mystery,” said Komisaruk. “The biggest mystery of all is how neurons actually produce pleasure and or pain. We still don’t understand it.”