THE BRAIN IS THE LARGEST ORGAN

The Brain Is the Largest Sex Organ (and Size Matters!)

• As you walk by me, millions of nerve cells spark in my brain and I have to turn to look at you again.
• You look back at me and a soft, brief smile forms on your lips. As you notice my eyes following you, your smile triggers an adrenaline release that causes my heart to leap with excitement.
• Chemicals send increased blood flow to sensitive areas, as thoughts of you light the emotional fire centers of my mind.
• For a brief moment you literally live in my skin.
• As we connect, my mind works overtime obsessing on your smell and the color of your eyes.
• You beat in my heart.
• You pulse in my nervous system from the nerve pathways of my brain to the soles of my feet.
• I start to become disoriented when we are apart.
• Over time, your touch becomes essential.
• I crave you.
• Your body feels warm and reassuring.
• I need it next to me.
• I sleep peacefully knowing you are near, and wake often in the dark to feel your skin.
• I never want to get out of bed when I am lying next to you.
• I look for you in my brain when you are away.
• Your voice sweetens the vibrations in the air.
• My mind beseeches me to make love to you, again and again.
• Our bodies navigate space together.
• Your mind reads mine as you know how I want to be touched.
• How does that happen?
• You must have cells that mirror my desires.
• The neurons of my eyes light up with sparks when you walk in a room, especially if you have been away for a while.
• Songs, smells, places, and pictures never let me forget you as they trigger the memory centers in my brain where you live as if you were next to me.
• The judgment part of my brain watches what I say when we are together so I can protect your feelings.
• I watch how your eyes, face, and body move as you talk to me, to know if you are happy, desirous, or in need of a hug or understanding.

Even though it feels genital, the vast majority of love and sex occurs in the brain. Your brain decides who is attractive to you, how to get a date, how well you do on the date, what to do with the feelings that develop, how long those feelings last, when to commit, and how well you do as a partner and a parent. Your brain helps you be enthusiastic in the bedroom or drains you of desire and passion. Your brain helps you process and learn from a breakup or makes you vulnerable to depression or obsession. When the brain works right, it helps you be thoughtful, playful, romantic, intimate, committed, and loving with your partner. When the brain is dysfunctional, it causes you to be
impulsive, distracted, addicted, unfaithful, angry, and even hateful, thus ruining chances for continued intimacy and love.

Your brain is also the seat of orgasms. Some research implicates the right hemisphere of the brain. In fact, certain forms of epilepsy, especially those found in the right temporal lobe, have been associated with spontaneous orgasms. In one case from Taiwan, a forty-one-year old woman had seizures that were induced only when she brushed her teeth. The seizure started with the feelings of being sexually aroused, then she felt an orgasmlike euphoria wash over her, which was followed by feelings of confusion. Her brain-imaging studies showed problems in the right temporal lobe, an area that has been associated with both orgasms and religious experience. When someone has orgasmiclike feelings when brushing her teeth, odds are that she will have very clean pearly whites.

Scientists agree that the brain is the organ of behavior; as such, it really is the largest sex organ in the body (about three pounds), and in this case size really does matter. Our brain becomes less and less active and decreases in overall size as we age. This is true for males and females and there appears to be an equal loss of gray matter (nerve cell bodies) and white matter (the connections between nerve cells). If you learn to take care of your brain, however, it can be active and healthy throughout your life. With targeted interventions, you can impact brain health, lose less brain tissue, and keep your brain healthy well into your elderly years.

Why does this matter to sexual function? As the brain dims in activity over the decades, so, too, does many people’s sexual function. The two go together. In men between the ages of forty and seventy studied over a nine-year period, there was a signi􀀳cant decline in sexual function with age. This is consistent with past studies that have shown a decline in sexual desire, intercourse, and erection frequency. Erectile dysfunction (ED) is very common and increases with age. Forty percent of men in their forties, and 70 percent in their seventies had problems. In women, aging and menopause often negatively affect sexual interest and performance.
A major reason underlying both sexual and brain dysfunction is decreased blood flow. Blood does so many important things. It brings oxygen, sugar, and nutrients to your cells and it takes away waste products. Anything that interferes with healthy blood flow will impair an oxygen, sugar, and nutrients to your cells and it takes away waste products. Anything that interferes with healthy blood flow will impair an organ’s functioning. Decreased blood flow to genitals from hypertension; vascular disease; diabetes; toxic exposure, such as drug abuse or smoking; physical trauma; and other causes impairs sexual function. Increased blood flow, from targeted interventions including exercise, ginkgo, and compounds that increase nitric oxide, such as Viagra and ginseng, improves function and reverses aging.

Likewise, decreased blood flow to your brain, from any cause, decreases brain function, which means you are likely to make impaired decisions and subsequently have less sex. Few scientists have looked at the connection between brain health and sexual behavior. That’s where I come in. My primary work is as a brain-imaging specialist. I have been doing imaging work for more than sixteen years and my clinics have the world’s largest database of scans related to behavior, more than 35,000. We look at the brain on a daily basis using a sophisticated study called SPECT imaging. SPECT stands for “single photon emission computed tomography,” a nuclear medicine study that evaluates blood 􀀷ow and activity patterns in the brain. We have looked at many healthy brains and brains in trouble. We have looked at the brains of children, teenagers, adults, and the elderly. We have looked at brains on medications, drug and alcohol abuse, supplements, prayer and meditation, gratitude, and a wide variety of psychological and biological treatments. We have looked at the brain in love, lust,
commitment, divorce, domestic violence, sexual abuse, and loss.

At our clinics, our primary work is to help maximize people’s brain function for the most satisfying and healthy life possible. We help healthy people who want to improve their own brain function, as well as treat attention deficit disorders (ADD), mood and anxiety disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorders, addictions, temper problems, and memory disturbances. We often help individuals and couples who struggle with relationship and sexual problems of all kinds. It is really possible to dramatically improve brain function, whether your brain is troubled or not, and thus dramatically improve your life. Our guiding principle for the past sixteen years has been “Change your brain,
change your life.”

Since most people cannot see the brain, it is often left out of the equations of our lives. Yet, it is at the core of our personal universe. Connecting sex and the brain through the lens of brain imaging has been one of the most fascinating journeys of my life, and I will share it with you in this book. I became much more effective in helping couples when I started looking at their relationships and sexuality together with brain function. It is clear that healthy brain function is associated with more loving and sexual relationships, while poor brain function is associated with more lighting, less sex, and higher divorce rates. In committed relationships, sex is a critical ingredient for health and longevity, but most people never connect the brain and sex. I start with a clear bias: Sex is best in the context of a committed, loving relationship. Anthropologist Helen Fisher writes, “Do not copulate
with people you do not want to fall in love with, because you might do just that.” Sex bonds you to others, and in some cases, if you are not careful and thoughtful, it can put you in bondage to others. Although this is my bias, it is not always the context of some of the research studies I will share with you on the sexual benefits for health and longevity, which are based solely on sexual frequency.

Having acknowledged that fact, there are other studies that strongly suggest a happy marriage is also associated with longevity, which usually means not sharing yourself sexually outside your primary relationship. The discussion throughout the book is on heterosexual relationships, but the same principles apply to all committed, loving relationships.

Based on my latest research, this book will share twelve practical neuroscience lessons to enhance your love and sex life. Practical neuroscience is a term I coined for the study of applying the latest brain research to everyday life. I am the type of person, like many of you, who always wants to know why I should learn something. If it isn’t practical or helpful, then I don’t want to expend great amounts of neuronal effort on it. The reason to study neuroscience is that it is immensely practical.

Here’s an example:
On a recent faculty retreat with the University of California, Irvine Department of Psychiatry, where I teach psychiatric residents, I was walking back from dinner through a shopping district along the quaint cobblestone streets of Taormina, Sicily, with one of my colleagues and his wife. They were talking about buying shoes. The wife wanted her husband to go with her to the shoe boutique and he was balking a bit. I looked at him and said, “You want to go with her.” He gave me a quizzical look which said, “Why?”

I replied, “In the brain, the sensory area of the foot is right next door to the sensory area for the clitoris. Unknowingly, women often feel that buying shoes is like foreplay. Feet are one of the best ways to a woman’s affections.” With my friend’s help, his wife bought three pairs of shoes the next day. He had a smile on his face for the rest of the trip.


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