Sex from the inside

[voluptuary_manque]

Perhaps it won an Ignoble Prize for medicine but I actually found this video fascinating. http://www.livescience.com/culture/etc/090821-mri-reveals-organs-during-sex.html

 

[dr_mabeuse]

I heard about this several years ago (Original paper, published in 1999), and after seeing the stills, I was so shocked and disappointed that this kind of work would be made fun of by the Ig Noble Prize Committe that I wrote them a letter of protest. They wrote back and pointed out that the Ig Noble Prize is awarded to the 10 top research projects of the year that do the most to "make people laugh, and then think," which seemed like a rather mealy-mouthed apology to me.

Considering our profound ignorance of the physiology of sex even in this day and age, and the impact sex has on us, research like this should be lauded and encouraged, not treated with derision. Top sexologists are still arguing about such basic issues as the existence of the G-spot and the explanation for female ejaculation, and while van Andel and his team didn't find hard evidence of either, at least they looked.

Below are three images from the original paper. Left to right they show a side view through a multiparous subject in a (L) normal state, (M) sexually aroused, and (R) 20 minutes after orgasm. Orgasms were described as mild, but considering the conditions, squeezed into the center of a banging, clanking MRI machine, that's pretty understandable. Even so, you can see the thickening of the of the nerve-rich front-wall of the vagina and the way the uterus lifts and tips. It's fascinating stuff.

I couldn't find the good shots of the male erection, which showed the penis to be a boomerang-shaped structure that had about 1/3 of its length fixed in the body.

http://www.bmj.com/content/vol319/issue7225/images/large/schw4391.f3.jpeg

Here's the couple engaged in coitus. You can see how the shaft of the penis (just above his rather well-defined balls) extends back into the male body.
http://www.bmj.com/content/vol319/issue7225/images/small/schw4391.f3l.gif

 

[voluptuary_manque]

In the book Bonk an entire chapter is devoted to this research. The author even volunteered (and volunteered her husband!) for the imaging. She described the experience as not terribly erotic. "I feel like a secretary in a ribald French comedy calmly sitting at her desk taking a letter while the mailroom guy hides in the footwell with his face between her legs."

 

[jomar]

While it adds to the knowledge...there is humor in the whole thing. I mean, can't you just picture them looking around after they made a copy of their butts on the xerox saying, "Hmm, that was fun, now what..."

 

[voluptuary_manque]

HM was amused and she spends her entire work day among medical types. Their sense of humor is a bit, shall we say, low?