The Science of Yoga

Komisaruk began using a new means of investigation that went far beyond the EEG in revealing how orgasms light up the brain. The technique, known as functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, or functional MRI, showed changes in cerebral blood flow and thus neuralactivity. By the 1990s, functional MRI had come to dominate the world of brain mapping because of its easy operation, wide availability, and clear data. Its pictures showed the overall brain in grayish tones and areas of heightened activity lit up in oranges and yellows.
    From his laboratory in New Jersey, Komisaruk began using the machine in the late 1990s to better understand the workings of neurophysiology and orgasm. By 2003, still fascinated by the think-off women of more than a decade earlier, he began a new round of experimentation meant to explore what functional MRI might reveal about their spontaneous orgasms as well as fundamental aspects of human sexuality.
    Much good science gets done by eliminating the jumble of confusing variables that surround most aspects of nature. That is what Dostálek and the Russians did in examining the physiological repercussions of a single yoga pose. Komisaruk was attracted to the think-off women for the same reason. Spontaneous orgasms seemed to represent the human climactic experience shorn of the confusing variables of sensory input and muscular contraction. For brain imaging, that meant the sensory and motor cortex would stay grayish, as would most other regions of the brain normally involved in the human interaction with the external world. In theory, the functional MRI would show the purely limbic parts of the experience. Of course, women having orgasms without touching themselves might eventually shudder with pleasure, as the 1992 study had shown. But the commotion might start relatively late in the arousal. In theory, the new line of experimentation promised to produce what Komisaruk called a “cleaner picture” of orgasm and an opportunity to better understand its nature.
    In 2003, upon examining the first images, Komisaruk was pleased to see confirmation of the study’s conclusions from a decade earlier. The pleasure centers of the women’s brains lit up more or less identically whether they reached their orgasmic highs by means of physical stimulation or simply thinking off. Different paths led to the same outcome.
    The challenge was getting enough volunteers. A good study would require a fair number of subjects—all of them possessing a rare talent largely unknown to the world at large. The recruiting job required a light touch, good connections, and a bit of astute salesmanship. After all, what woman was eager to lie down on a hard table under the glare of fluorescent lights andhave her head zapped by a giant donut-shaped magnet while attempting to let go?
    It was a difficult proposition at best—difficult, that is, until Nan Wise came along. Nan Wise is an attractive sex therapist and yoga teacher whom Komisaruk got to know when she went back to school at Rutgers after raising two children. Studying yoga and learning how to pay close attention to the energy currents in her body had turned her into a skilled practitioner of thinking off, and she agreed to a functional MRI scan when Komisaruk asked her. “It’s the least sexy thing in the world,” she told me. “But I do it for science.”
    By early 2010, Komisaruk and Wise had succeeded in doing preliminary scans on half a dozen volunteers. Head movement turned out to be a significant issue. The orgasms that Wise herself experienced while in the machine had resulted in virtually no head motion and thus very clear images. But other think-off women often thrashed about. In one case, Wise recalled, “it looked like the scanner was going to jump around the room.” As a solution, the scientists devised a head restraint that was bolted onto the machine. It worked. Now the heads of the think-off women held steady even if their bodies became agitated.
    Wise decided to pursue the inquiry as part of her doctoral research. What she and Komisaruk envisioned was documenting the steps by which various neural circuits and networks lit up in orgasm. In essence, they wanted to make a brain-scan movie, hoping it would throw light on fundamental riddles. For instance, the research might help scientists learn how to distinguish the parts of the brain that mediate pain and pleasure. The brain in a state of orgasm, Wise told me, looks much the same as when it