Sublime Ecstasy and Exquisite Agony

SciAm
Love is a delicate but compelling medley of dynamic brain networks. Swept by a torrent of hormones and neurotransmitters, the brain-in-love is released from many ordinary worries and concerns -- and firmly compelled by others.

When one gives themselves up to their feelings of love -- when she let's herself go -- she can experience one of the ultimate pleasures of life: the beautiful agony.

... researcher Janniko Georgiadis said the OFC may be the basis for 'sexual control', and that by 'letting go' women can induce orgasm.

He said: 'I don't think orgasm turns off consciousness but it changes it.

'When you ask people how they perceive their orgasm, they describe a feeling of a loss of control.' _DailyMail

Beautiful agony - Watch more Funny Videos
The pleasures of love -- both orgasmic and non-orgasmic -- are addictive just as surely as any drug of pleasure. Withdrawal is a painful and disorienting experience, leading many to try to grasp the fading remnants in an iron grip.

But it is the letting go that opens the floodgates of the love experience. That is the hardest to learn.

Cross-posted to Al Fin, You Sexy Thing!
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Female Orgasm MRI DailyMail

To create the scans, Dutch researchers stripped strapped the women into an MRI scanner and then allowed their partners to pleasure them to orgasm, all the while taking snapshots of their brain activity.

It is hoped that by comparing the brain scans of women having an orgasm with those who cannot, scientists will be able to 'coach' those with anorgasmia into truly 'letting go'.

Kenneth Casey at the University of Michigan explained that people who suffer from chronic pain conditions can be coached to relieve some of their symptoms by altering how they thought.

Experiments proved that when people watched real-time video of their rostral anterior cingulate cortex - the site of their 'pain' - they were able to reduce their symptoms by mentally adjusting it and watching the results on screen. _DailyMail

Such real-time MRI neurofeedback as described above can be used for far more than the control of physical pain. Pleasure can be enhanced, as can cognitive skills and memory. Unpleasant memories can likewise be minimised.

We are entering a brave new world of understanding, with regard to brain states and networks. What we do with this new understanding is up to us.

More on the neuroscience of love and lust