The joy of the G Spot

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It has evaded lovers for centuries , but in February we learned that the elusive and semi-mythical G spot had been captured on ultrasound for the first time .

Emmanuele Jannini at the University of L‘Aquila in Italy discovered clear anatomical differences between women who claim to have vaginal orgasms – triggered by stimulation of the front vaginal wall without any simultaneous stimulation of the clitoris –and those that don‘t. Apparently, the key is that women who orgasm during penetrative sex have a thicker area of tissue in the region between the vagina and urethra, meaning a simple scan could separate out the lucky“haves” from the “have-nots”.

Even better, Jannini now has evidence that women who have this thicker tissue can be “taught” to have vaginal orgasms. Ultrasound scans on 30 women uncovered G spots in just eight of them and when these women were asked if they had vaginal orgasms during sex, only five of them said yes. However, when the remaining three were shown their G spots on the scan and given advice on how to stimulate it, two of them subsequently “discovered” the joy of vaginal orgasms. “This demonstrated, although in a small sample, the use of [vaginal ultrasound] in teaching the vaginal orgasm,“ Jannini says.

Sadly, none of the have-nots had vaginal orgasms either before or after the scans, so they‘ll just have to make do with the old-fashioned clitoral kind. The results were presented at the Italian Society of Andrology and Sexual Medicine in Rome in November.

Jannini is now investigating whether hirsute women are more likely to have G spots since they have higher levels of testosterone and both the clitoris and the G spot are thought to respond to the hormone.

The burning question is whether women with a small G spot can “grow” it with practice. Jannini is optimistic. “I fully agree that the use makes the organ. I do expect an increase with frequent use.“ So perhaps the only way to make the most of your G spot, if you have one, is to get practising. LINDA GEDDES

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Neural knitworks

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It’s the human brain as you’ve never seen it before

AS SOON as she saw her first images of the brain, Marjorie Taylor was spellbound. The vibrant pinks and blues, the intricate detailing - somehow they spoke to her. "I couldn't help but look at them with the eye of a quilter," says Taylor, a psychologist at the University of Oregon. "I thought the folds of the cerebral cortex would be great in velvet."

And so was born a new genre of visual art: scientifically accurate fabric brains. True to her original vision, Taylor's first piece was a quilt with a cerebral cortex in blue velvet on a silver background. She has since completed three more brain-themed quilts. "Not very many," she admits. "They take a long time to do."

Taylor isn't the only fabric artist who draws inspiration from neuroscience. Psychiatrist Karen Norberg of the National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts, also creates anatomically correct fabric brain art. Independently of Taylor, she decided to make an accurate model of the human brain - in wool.

It took a year to knit, and the result is astonishing. The cortex of Norberg's larger-than-life brain has realistic folds, while the internal structure is correct down to the nearest stitch. All the parts are properly connected, as can be revealed by undoing a well-concealed zip that connects the two hemispheres.

Like all the best art, the brain is a one-off. "This is one of a kind," says Norberg. "It's a labour of love."

The woollen brain is now housed at the Museum of Science in Boston, while Taylor's works hang in various offices and institutes around the University of Oregon. "Someday we hope to bring all the pieces together for a show," says Taylor. For now, images of both women's work can be seen at the online Museum of Scientifically Accurate Fabric Brain Art (http://harbaugh.uoregon.edu/Brain/index.htm), curated by neuro-economist Bill Harbaugh of the University of Oregon.

Neither artist is resting on her textile laurels. At the moment, Taylor is using a traditional Nova Scotian technique to make a rug depicting an fMRI scan of the brain lighting up in response to spoken words. Norberg is working on quilts showing the chemical structure of various brain hormones and neurotransmitters. "It seems to work well to represent them using a very traditional quilting pattern," she says.

Norberg and Taylor don't take their art too seriously. Norberg accepts that there is something faintly ridiculous about knitting a brain. And yet, she says, it was surprisingly instructive. "It's a way to learn microanatomy and neurodevelopment." Taylor also sees the humorous side. "I do think it's beautiful, but there is something funny about it," she says. But she too remains defiant about her hobby. "There are plenty of rugs that show flowers and cats and lighthouses," she points out. "Why not fMRI scans?"

Michael Brooks

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Bye-bye Boojums

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Are scientists losing their sence of fun?

WHAT is a boojum? Is it: a particularly dangerous variety of snark; a bizarre cactus-like tree endemic to Baja California in Mexico; or a geometrical pattern sometimes seen on the surface of superfluid helium-3? In fact it‘s all three. Fans of Lewis Carroll will recall that in his poem The Hunting of the Snark, boojums are the most feared of all snarks. Meagre and hollow, but crisptasting beasts, they inhabit desolate valleys –a bit like the Mexican tree. Carroll‘s boojums cause those who venture too close to “softly and suddenly vanish away“ – a fate that also befalls helium‘s superfluidity when a boojum appears.

The names have come about thanks to science‘s long tradition of allowing individuals to name discoveries as they see fit. The Mexican succulent owes its moniker to the English-born botanist Godfrey Sykes. On spying his first example in 1922, he reportedly snorted, in the spirit of Carroll‘s snark hunters, “Ho ho, a boojum!” Half a century later, in an age less accommodating of eccentricity, physicist David Mermin of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, had to employ a good deal more stealth and guile to establish his superfluid tribute to Carroll. Part of his motivation, he admits, was putting one over on journal editors, but he had a more constructive reason too: “It‘s nice to have names for things that are suggestive,“ he says. These days, such considerations are rarely enough. The sheer profusion of things to be labelled and pigeon-holed means nomenclature is increasingly being standardised by flint-faced committees with little taste for whimsy. So is the colourful side of science itself softly vanishing away? Admittedly, standardised nomenclature is nothing new. Plants are subject to one of the oldest standardised naming schemes –the binomial system established by Carl Linnaeus in the 18^th century – and its regulatory framework, the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature, is a model of tolerance. “A legitimate name must not be rejected merely because it… is inappropriate or disagreeable,“ states article 51.1. Despite this, botanists are rarely as idiosyncratic as Sykes when it comes to choosing official plant names. “There‘s simply not much mileage in it,“ says John MacNeill of the Royal Botanical Garden in Edinburgh, UK.

Other disciplines are less relaxed. The International Astronomical Union (IAU), which is responsible for naming celestial objects, would happily get rid of the poetic but messy legacy of star names handed down from early astronomers and replace them with the kind of unique, concise numerical identifier now given to all newly discovered stars. Out with Sirius and Betelgeuse, and in with HR 2491 and HR 2061. Killjoys? Not at all, they say. With the hundreds of millions of stars we now know of, using old-fashioned names would be unworkable. And for those who have taken up commercial offers to name a star or parcel of lunar real estate after their loved ones, the IAU has an stern admonition : “Such ‘names’ have no formal or official validity whatever,“ it says. Geneticists also grapple with huge amounts of data. Ideally, human genes would have the same names as equivalent genes already discovered in other organisms. “We had particular problems with fruit-fly researchers,“ says Sue Povey of University College London, who chaired the committee approving names for human genes from 1996 to 2007. “They were always giving their genes names like hedgehog.“As memorable as such names are, they can prove problematical too. Take the mammalian gene Sonic hedgehog, which acquired its name from the related fruit-fly gene. It is now known to play a role in a developmental disorder of the brain known as holoprosencephaly. The name does not help when parents have to be told that a mutation in Sonic hedgehog has given rise to their baby‘s potentially fatal condition. “It would be nice to have a system for human genes that was stable, memorable and meaningful at the same time,“ says Povey. But that‘s impossible to achieve, and ultimately the need for stability – and searchability in gene databases – is winning out. The result is the unpronounceable alphanumeric jumble that is the typical gene name today.

It could be a metaphor for science: ever more complex, ever more impenetrable. The shift may be regrettable, but there is a general feeling that it is inevitable. “I slightly mourn the more whimsical names“ says Povey, “but their time was past.“ Richard Webb

“Meagre and hollow,but crisp-tasting beasts, they inhabit desolate valleys”

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