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Introduction
A few months ago, I wrote a post on this blog about sex.
I eventually gave it the title: A Frank Look at Your Brain and Sex.
I originally called it The Sexiest Parts of Your Brain a Deep Dive into the Neurological basis of sexuality. But frankly that title was almost as long as the post itself, so I changed it.
The post looked at how the amygdala and the temporal lobes of the brain affect our sexual function. Personally, I thought the post was pretty average. My readers, however, thought otherwise.
When I looked at the stats, I was surprised by the number of readers and how long readers were staying on the page. Okay, they could have fallen asleep reading, but I’m taking a more charitable view.
Let’s face it, sex sells. And it also makes up any deficiencies in my writing.
So, after looking at the stats, I got thinking about why I wrote the post in the first place? There are two answers to that question.
First, a few days earlier I’d heard something on the radio about a condition called synaesthesia and second, that gave me a vague recollection of something I’d read about phantom limbs.
So, what’s sex got to do with those things. Well, believe it or not quite a bit.
As things turned out, I didn’t write the article I intended. I got side tracked and wrote a completely different post from the one I intended.
This article, then, is the one I intended. So, we’ll start with the fascinating topic of synaesthesia, move on to phantom limbs and link it all together with a jolly good dose of sex.
Synaesthesia
Synaesthesia is a neurological condition where our senses get jumbled up. So, some people may see sounds or hear colours or taste shapes. I know, it sounds like what you might experience with mind altering drugs!
But some people don’t need anything to experience these things. A slightly more formal definition of synaesthesia is given by Psychology Today, which explains that:
[Synaesthesia] is a neurological condition in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway (for example, hearing) leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway (such as vision).
Synaesthesia Is not a medical condition, as such. There is no treatment for it, because it’s not an illness.
Now, I confess that I have no extensive evidence to back up what I’m going to say next, but from what I’ve read synaesthetes regard their condition as a novel way of viewing the world.
A number of highly creative people – Wagner, Sibelius, Tesla – are known to have been synaesthetes. This could just be coincidence. About 4% of people have synaesthesia. Some of that 4% are bound to be particularly creative.
So, it may be correlation not causation that we are dealing with. It is possible, that being able to experience the world differently, somehow enables creativity.
People are usually born with synaesthesia, although there are occasions when it might occur later in life. There is some evidence that it might be inherited in some cases.
But the exact cause of synaesthesia is unknown.
There are a number of different types of synaesthesia. One of the most common is called grapheme colour synaesthesia.
Let’s take a look.
Grapheme Colour Synaesthesia
With this type of synaesthesia, people see letters, words and numbers in colour. I find this type of synaesthesia particularly interesting because I have this condition.
As far as I’m aware, I’ve always had it. It has never troubled me and sadly it has not given me any amazing creative ability.
For me, words and letters have always had colours. In my mind, I see words and letters in colour. For example, G is green, A is red, S is blue, D is grey mixed with some white and J is orange. T is a yellowy colour.
When I was very young, the colours were very vivid. They are much less so now. It’s like the paint has been heavily watered down.
That’s how I’d describe what I know see: watery colours in many cases. So, D and T have lost their vividness for me: A and S are still quite vibrant, though.
The days of the week have colour. Monday is yellow, Tuesday is blue, Wednesday brown and Friday grey. Usually, words tend to take their colour from the initial letter. The days of the week are exceptions.
So, I see words beginning with T – like tomorrow, today, tornado, trap, time – as a watery yellowy colour. But Tuesday is blue, and Thursday is red.
Numbers tend to take their colour from the initial letter: six, seven, sixteen, seventeen are all blue. But not anywhere near as blue as I used to see them.
I also see days of the week in a particular spatial pattern. That is a type of synaesthesia known as spatial sequence synaesthesia.
Spatial Sequence Synaesthesia
This is where you perceive sequences like numbers, dates, days of the week, or months of the year as occupying specific locations in space. There is no single spatial configuration. Each person’s experience is unique.
For me, the days of the week are squares. The squares are coloured – the same colour that I see the days of the week. I see the squares as a ladder structure – a bit like the ladder in snakes and ladders but with squares not rungs.
But sometimes the ladder is going up; sometimes it’s going down. But not the two weekend days.
Monday to Friday are positioned one after the other and the Saturday and Sunday turn off at right angles – always left to right. Then the ladder starts again with Monday.
If you’ve never come across synaesthesia before, this might all sound a little weird. But not as weird as phantom limbs.
Phantom Limbs
Phantom limbs are a well-documented phenomenon. People who have lost a limb will often have experiences where they feel that the lost limb is still there.
In some cases this can be extra-ordinary painful – even though the limb is not there, the pain is real enough for the person experiencing it.
I was aware of phantom limbs, but when I read Phantoms in the Brain: Human Nature and the Architecture of the Mind by V S Ramachandran and Sandra Blakeslee I gained a whole new perspective.
By the way, that link is an Amazon affiliate link, which means that if you click the link and buy the book, I get a small commission, at no expense to you.
The book is fascinating and, on the whole, very clearly and engagingly written. There are one or two places where the descriptions are not quite as crisp as you’d like, but it is a very technical and obscure subject.
The book is not just about phantom limb syndrome. Ramachandran covers such conditions as Capgras syndrome (where people believe familiar individuals are imposters), hemineglect (where people are unaware of one side of their body or field of vision), and anosognosia (where people deny their own disabilities).
But it was the topic of phantom limbs that really go my attention, especially when Ramachandran explained about the Penfield Homunculus.
The Penfield Homunculus
If I’ve understood things correctly, the sensations we feel in our bodies and due to the fact that each part of our body is mapped onto the brain.
Some parts of our bodies are more sensitive than other parts. Our lips are very sensitive, our upper bodies less so.
The more sensitive the part of the body, the greater the brain space required.
Wilder Penfield was a neurosurgeon, and he thought of a novel way of depicting visually how the different parts of our bodies vary in sensitivity. His visual depiction was the Penfield Homunculus.
The image is intentionally disproportionate. The larger the body part, the greater the sensitivity and the more brain space required.
So, here’s where things get interesting. People with synaesthesia have experiences of the world that most of us think highly unusual. Now, what if people’s bodily sensations could also get mixed up.
For example, if someone tickles my foot, could I feel it on my tongue?
You’ve probably worked out that bodily sensations can get mixed up. And it’s all connected with phantom limbs and how the areas of our body are mapped onto the brain.
In Phantoms in the Brain, Ramachandran describes the case of a man who, after losing his arm, experiences a phenomenon where sensations on one part of his body are felt as if they’re occurring on his missing limb. This is an example of what is sometimes called referred sensation.
Ramachandran explains that the man who hand had been amputated – felt a sensation on his phantom hand when someone placed liquid on his lips.
How can this possibly happen? Feeling as though you still have an amputated limb is one thing. And it’s something that, to me at any rate, seems understandable.
But feeling a sensation where you once had a limb that comes from another part of your body just mind boggling.
The explanation though is straightforward and leaves you thinking “ahh yes I get it.”
So, remember the Penfield Homunculus? Each part of the body is mapped to a region of the brain. And, of course, each region has a neighbouring reason. And it just happens that regions for the face and hands are neighbouring regions.
Our brains are pretty remarkable, to say the least. They exhibit a property known as neuroplasticity, which in simple terms is the brain’s ability to adapt.
In the case in the man having sensations in his hand, he has spare brain capacity in the region for his hands. The sensation he feels in his hands is because sensations in one brain region (lips) now encroaches on a region with spare capacity (hands).
You have to say that is remarkable.
But what if you could experience an orgasm in different parts of your body?
Phantom Orgasms
Size matters.
It’s true.
Ramachandran tells the story of a man whose foot had been amputated.
Can you guess which region of the brain is next to the region for the foot?
You guessed it. It’s the genitals.
Ramachandran explains how this man was experiencing the sensation of an orgasm in his phantom foot.
He was from being upset by this. He explained that his orgasms were much stronger than before because of the size of the member where he was experiencing them.
Foot Orgasms
Ever wondered why people play footsie under the table?
Well, it could just be the proximity of the regions of the brain and the genitals.
I don’t think there are many documented cases of people having foot orgasms – I mean in the foot not a phantom foot. There is at least one, however.
In this case a Dutch woman, aged 55, started to have orgasms in her left foot. This happened several times a day and were sudden and unwanted. The sensation travelled up her leg to her vagina.
The doctor treating the woman, Marcel Waldinger, thought that there may be other people with foot orgasm syndrome who are too embarrassed to talk about it. So, he set up a website for people to contact him.
I’d like to tell you that several thousand people got in touch. But as you’ll see from the website, Waldinger didn’t get enough interest to take him from his day job!
As always, if you found this interesting, leave a comment.