The Omnibrain is a psychology graduate student at an online university. He hopes that the three weeks and $29.95 that he is spending on his Ph.D. will get him a job at a Tier 1 research university. Do online universities have postdocs? Ok...just kidding, he is really a Ph.D. Candidate in Psychology studying high level vision. You know... stuff like scene & object perception.
While not an official contributer to 'Of Two Minds,' Shelley's sidekick is an African Grey parrot named Pepper. His heros are Irene Pepperberg, Alex, and Rachel Carson. He spends his time learning Mandarin and writing the Great American novel.
So what's the story with the big O? Scientific American has the full story. Here's the main points to get you warmed up though:
Principles of Pleasure* Sexual desire and orgasm are subject to various influences on the brain and nervous system, which controls the sex glands and genitals.
* The ingredients of desire may differ for men and women, but researchers have revealed some surprising similarities. For example, visual stimuli spur sexual stirrings in women, as they do in men.
* Achieving orgasm, brain imaging studies show, involves more than heightened arousal. It requires a release of inhibitions engineered by shutdown of the brain's center of vigilance in both sexes and a widespread neural power failure in females.
Here's the Scientific American article.
Brain & Behavior
Life Science
Comments
International Spontaneous Orgasm Day is on 28 May, I heard....
Posted by: Coturnix | May 15, 2008 11:17 PM
Mary Roach is currently doing the author circuit for Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex. Which may or may not teach you anything both new and practical, but is still pretty freakin' hilarious.
Posted by: jope | May 16, 2008 3:05 AM
I thought orgasm was the web site for the association for preservation of computer assembly language programming. Or was that asm.org?
Posted by: Ian | May 16, 2008 11:14 AM
I just downloaded this to read offline and I see it's written by Martin Portner. Shall we refer to this article in future as Portner's Complaint?
Posted by: Ian | May 16, 2008 11:26 AM
"... researchers have revealed some surprising similarities. For example, visual stimuli spur sexual stirrings in women, as they do in men."
This is surprising?
Posted by: Julie Stahlhut | May 16, 2008 12:13 PM
"...a widespread neural power failure in females"?? Then how come he's the one always falling asleep afterwards?
Posted by: AnnieH | May 16, 2008 5:05 PM
Annie,
Since you shut off your brain, you've got so much more energy left-over when you're done.
Posted by: Brian | May 17, 2008 7:45 PM
Thanks for the wisdom, Brian. That explains so many things for me now--like Grey's Anatomy--a whole lotta left-over energy going on there:>)
Posted by: AnnieH | May 18, 2008 10:06 AM
I wonder if this "brain shutting down" thing has something to do with why some cultures have such taboos against sex and seek to regulate it. If you have to release your inhibitions to orgasm, I can imagine that some particularly neurotic people would be uncomfortable with the sensation, leading them to dub sexuality "evil."
Posted by: ansuzmannaz | May 21, 2008 5:17 AM