Why Good Sex Matters: Understanding the Neuroscience of Pleasure for a Smarter, Happier, and More Purpose-Filled Life

By looking through the lens of how our brains are wired for pleasure, we will learn how to reclaim our innate, biologically wired capacity and need for joy, fun, exuberance, curiosity, and humor in all aspects of our lives.

In these studies, I also wanted to understand more about female sexual response, which was so understudied, and how exactly the brain is involved. I looked at how some of my ladies of the lab responded under two different conditions: orgasm brought about when a woman stimulated her own genitals, and that induced by a partner’s stimulation of her ge

One of the original goals of my research was to fill a huge gap in the scientific literature—to figure out the basic sensory wiring of the female genitals. It’s still hard for me to believe that this basic and important work was not done until 2011, when we published a study that systematically mapped the projections of the clitoris, anterior wall

Our culture has deep roots in a Calvinism that associates pleasure (especially sexual or sensual) with shame and places a higher value on stoicism. A number of recent studies have shown that modern-day Americans, even those who aren’t particularly religious, continue to be influenced by traditional Puritan-Protestant morality. This infuses us with

We’ve been told by sex experts that the cause of an inability to enjoy sex is sexual dysfunction, brought on by age, hormonal disruptions, or other diseases such as high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, or depression. And yes, these conditions all play a role in sexual shutdown. However, the underlying causes for sexual dysfunctions that im

We are deeply into sex, but at the same time, deeply at odds with it, often misunderstanding our own urges, needs, and desires. We judge our sexual longings, we curtail our desires, and we cut ourselves off from all that it affords us. We convince ourselves that we just don’t need it or want it. This is a problem that speaks to an unhappiness at ou

And yet, I also found that when they started talking about their sexuality in sessions, we were able to get at the heart of their other issues more quickly and with more insight. Once this door opened, they wanted to know why they couldn’t have satisfying sex, why they didn’t even want sex, and what, if anything, they could do about it. If they wer

When it’s overactive, your FEAR system is so tweaked that you may overreact to threats and end up depleted by chronic stress; this is common with generalized anxiety. Your exaggerated fear no longer serves you and becomes depleting and part of the problem.

Further exacerbating this connection between pain and pleasure is our difficulty with tolerating any measure of negative feelings. At the first sign of pain, we take an aspirin. At the first sign of emotional discomfort, we may be told to take an antidepressant. In fact, as a culture, we are encouraged to not feel too much of anything. In reality,

It’s a vicious cycle of emotional dysregulation: the inability to have pleasure drains us of enthusiasm for life; anxiety and depression rob us of the appetite and enthusiasm to pursue pleasure; and these negative emotions keep feeding off of one another.