I know I know. Oxytocin is the goody two-shoes of the hormone world. Blah blah blah emotional attachment, mother-child bonding, etc.. The cuddling hormone, if you will. Yes, it’s involved in orgasm, but anything that I had heard said oxytocin is mostly just responsible for post-coital coziness. Until now, that is!
Check out this fascinating article about research a group of scientists did on their masturbating subjects. The parameters for the 23 subjects were thusly:
Put them in a sound-attenuated room with a TV (for those who requested porn) and a nice chair. Then, add a blood pressure cuff, a butterfly needle indwelling catheter for continuous blood level monitoring, and anal probes for monitoring of smooth muscle contraction. All these things are on really long leads that go into the next room, so the subjects can get some privacy.
Anal probes! Maybe the aliens have been doing oxytocin research all this time… but I digress. You can read the article summarizing the research yourself, but the gist of it is that they found that oxytocin seems to be directly responsible for the muscle contractions of orgasm, and because of this, the amount of oxytocin released also seems to be responsible for the intensity of the contractions, and thus the orgasm. Hey hey! Looks like even oxytocin can let her hair down once in awhile.
It’s a really fascinating article, and apparently part of a series on the hormone. They also link to a bunch of corroborating studies. Well worth the read if you’re a sex science geek like I am.
