This Is What An Orgasm Does To Your Brain

For the record, fMRI machines can look at what parts of your brain are lighting up. When people have orgasms in these scanners (for science!), researchers are able to see their brains light up like the freaking Fourth of July.

“What we see is a gradual increase in all the brain regions leading up to orgasm,” behavioral neuroscientist Barry Komisaruk, Ph.D., coauthor of The Orgasm Answer Guide, told BuzzFeed Life.

Komisaruk has been studying brain activity during sexual stimulation for 20 years now, and he admits there’s still a lot we don’t know about what’s going on up there. But based on all those lab-induced orgasms, we have a pretty good idea of what regions are lighting up and why they might make us act kind of crazy in bed (or car/hotel/bathroom/wherever you’re getting naked). So here's what we do know:

This is basically the emotional control center of the brain. This includes the hippocampus, which is responsible for memory and fantasies, says Komisaruk. (Maybe that’s why thoughts of your ex or the hot salesperson you saw yesterday keep popping into your head.)

It also includes the amygdala, which is another emotional part of the brain involved in sexual functioning, fear, and aggression. This doesn’t necessarily translate into rough, angry sex — it just means that this highly emotional area is also activated when you're sexing.

These regions are the anterior cingulate cortex and the insular cortex, and activity steadily increases in both during sex. When these light up in response to pleasure, it’s possible that they can can help inhibit pain sensations, Komisaruk explains. That might be why things like biting and hair pulling don’t hurt as much when you’re having sex. This also explains why facial expressions made in the heat of an orgasm are similar to the grimaces we make when we’re in pain, he says.

Your brain officially has no chill. All the activation leading up to this point comes to a crescendo at orgasm, says Komisaruk. This is when the hypothalamus and nucleus accumbens, which basically produce the grand finale of brain responses, are activated. Your heart is racing, your pupils are dilated, you’re breathing heavily, and you’re getting a sex flush — this is all thanks to activation in the hypothalamus.

The nucleus accumbens — the reward center of the brain — gets a flood of dopamine, which activates it and rewards you for all the sex. This area is also activated by addictive things — like chocolate, cocaine, caffeine, or nicotine, says Komisaruk. When it’s activated during sexy times, it’s possible that it could make you want to have even more sex, since it’s associated with this rewarding response. So, yeah, sex is basically like a drug.