If you felt what i felt you’d just.....well, you just die

It's well-known that varying male and female sexual response has a very close association with the brain.

As is commonly know, the brain is divided into two hemispheres, the "right brain" and the "left brain". The right side of the brain controls hand and eye functions, while the left is in charge of speech. When the left side of the brain receives a large dose of male hormones, its functionality declines. That's why men can't chat away madly during sex. All they can do is keep on moving their bodies. On the other hand, for women, where the left brain takes priority, they can speak and well as let their voice ring out. When women try and get their men to spend a little time whispering sweet nothings to them while making love, they may literally be asking for the impossible.

Differences in male and female sexual response are influenced by the arousal nerves, one of which is the sexual polarization nucleus, located in the brain's hypothalamus. The sexual polarization nucleus in men is double the size that of women. Perhaps the male ability to become easily aroused through stimulation of the senses of sight and smell compared to the woman's need to be touched may have something to do with the different way their brains are structured. While men can become pleased rapidly, they also cool down quickly, which sometimes leads to them feeling uncomfortable at being touched after ejaculation. It's a major difference to women, who gradually cool down after orgasm.

Ryuichi Kaneko, one of my co-authors in the book "Sekkusu no Subete ga Wakaru Hon (All About Sex," wrote about how the brain affects male and female orgasm. Kaneko wrote how watching pornography shows a clear difference between male and female response. He pointed out the results of an experiment where men and women were shown a pornographic movie and their arousal level differed. Women who knew in advance that they were going to be shown a blue movie were aroused in advance, but changed little on seeing the film. Men showed little response when told they were going to watch a pornographic movie, but became aroused quickly once the action started on screen.

The mental side of sex is clearly more important for women than men, while males have a stronger need for the immediacy symbolized by the erection.

Brain waves also display these differences. Frequencies measured during scientific tests of orgasms show theta waves of 6 to 7 Hertz. This is about the same level as marathoners enjoying a "runners' high." If theta waves are to be the measuring stick of pleasure, a woman's brain at the time of orgasm is filled with them across its entirety and the period when theta waves are active in women's brain is almost 10 times more than for a man. Judging by theta waves at the time of orgasm, women experience a pleasure incomparable to that felt by men.

Putting it crudely, were a man to experience an orgasm like a woman's, the shock to his brain could kill him. Of course, no man has ever experienced that, naturally, because men can never be women. However, as my co-author Kaneko points out, there are transgendered people (those whose bodies are male but brains female or bodies female and brains male) who have undergone gender transformation surgery who have spoken about the incredible pleasure they have gained from sex as women.

Neither men nor women can ever truly know what sex feels like for the opposite gender. Perhaps that means when they ask each other if something feels good or not, they're actually imagining what it would be like for the other sex so they can help themselves get aroused. (By Dr. Kunio Kitamura, special to the Mainichi)