While everyone has different erogenous zones, it’s fairly common for genitals to be considered erogenous zones. Many women (and men) report that nipple stimulation to be extremely pleasurable and I even have a female friend who says that she can orgasm from nipple play alone.
Though this shouldn’t be shocking news to most people, now we have more of a scientific understanding as to why nipple stimulation works the way it does, thanks to a study that was published at the end of July in the Journal of Sex Medicine. The study, which Live Science has written about, shows that in functional MRIs (fMRIs) the same areas in the brain that light up when women’s genitals are stimulated also light up with nipple stimulation.
In the study, the women were put inside of a fMRI machine, and then stimulated their vagina, cervix, clitoris, and nipples so that the scientists could map out where these areas light up in the brain. While the study has not been fully replicated in males, for some men there is a similar reaction in the fMRI. At this point, the study was only done in healthy women who still had a uterus, but one scientist is planning to replicate the study using women who have had hysterectomies.
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