Word: orgasming
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...research team of William Masters and Virginia Johnson in the 1960s, published some of the first scholarly studies of human sexuality. Those studies concluded that sexual response proceeds in distinct stages, beginning with excitement--erection in men, engorgement of vaginal and clitoral tissue in women--proceeding to orgasm and finally to "resolution," in which tissues return to their normal state...
...have to feel sexual desire--a statement that seems pretty obvious. It's also pretty obvious to anyone who has been in a heterosexual relationship that men and women tend to experience sexuality somewhat differently. So where Masters and Johnson saw sexual arousal as a linear progression toward orgasm, researchers like Dr. Rosemary Basson of the University of British Columbia argued in 1999 that women, at least, operate in a more circular pattern. Desire can precede stimulation or be triggered by it. Satisfaction is possible at any of the stages. And orgasm isn't necessarily the ultimate goal...
Another neurotransmitter almost certainly involved in the biochemistry of desire is serotonin, which, like dopamine, plays a role in feelings of satisfaction. Antidepressants like Prozac, which enhance mood by keeping serotonin in circulation longer than usual, can paradoxically depress the ability to achieve orgasm. But "dopamine and serotonin," says Heiman, "appear to interact with each other in a complicated way to impact desire...
...researchers suspect, do the neurotransmitters epinephrine and norepinephrine, whose usual job is to pump up our energy when we're in danger. Blood-plasma levels of both chemicals increase during masturbation, peak at orgasm and then decline, and by-products of norepinephrine metabolism remain elevated for up to 23 hours after sex. It's not yet clear, though, whether this is a cause or an effect of arousal...
Endocrinologists have known for years that oxytocin, released by the pituitary gland, ovaries and testes, helps trigger childbirth contractions, milk production during nursing and the pelvic shudders women experience during orgasm (and possibly the contractions during male orgasm as well). The hormone is believed to play a vital role in mother-child bonding and may do the same for new fathers: oxytocin surges when a new dad holds his bundle of joy. Some researchers also think of oxytocin as a cuddle chemical. Preliminary studies by psychiatrist Kathleen Light at the University of North Carolina have found that oxytocin levels rise...