Can you use a vibrator inside FMRI machine? fMRI-compatible Vibrotactile Stimulators in Orgasmology Research

The idea to use vibration to stimulate regions of the body during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has been out for about as long as fMRI machines. In the early days of fMRI machines, you couldn’t bring your Hitachi Magic Wand or “back massager” into the machine with you, as doing so would damage the fMRI machine or create additional noise in the research data. Only non-metal dildos could be used.

Vibrators help some trans people, penis-owners, and clitoris-owners have an orgasm, orgasms, or multiple orgasms.

Those who have difficulty due to a skeletal-muscular/development conditions, missing limb, paralysis, or an injury report that vibrators are essential for any genital stimulation. fMRI-compatible vibrators are essential for making fMRI-based orgasmology research more inclusive.

Being inside a fMRI machine is not always very comfortable. A vibrator can help decrease the amount of time one is in the claustrophobia-inducing machine.

Gupta’s blog (http://www.theneuroethicsblog.com/2012/05/sex-in-machine.html?m=1) describes how having an orgasm in an fMRI machine can be easier for some participants than others:

“According to [Kayt] Sukel, [Barry] Komisaruk told her that only a few study volunteers have been unable to stimulate themselves to orgasm in the MRI machine. This suggests a few things – first, that maybe a fair number of women are perfectly comfortable with, or are even turned on by, loud noises, confined spaces, curious spectators, and immobilization devices. It also suggests that Komisaruk’s volunteers may be a very specific type of women,with a very particularly type of sexuality (i.e. a woman who doesn’t need to use a vibrator). This itself is not a problem, the only danger is if the sexuality of these women is established as the “norm” against which all other types of sexuality are judged (as in what happened with Masters and Johnson’s research)” (para. 9).

Perhaps a vibrator can help people, who would otherwise have difficulty having an orgasm in the machine, have an orgasm (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7678780/).

There are many ways to make a vibrator that is fMRI-compatible material without magnetic susceptibility. However, a sex toy store will most likely not have a vibrator that is fMRI-compatible.

The following article outlines the pros and cons of each type (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6871978/).

• Pneumatic devices – Pneumatic vibrators are powered by airpuffs and tend to have low maximum stimulation frequencies, so if one needs a lot of stimulation to reach orgasm, it may not be sufficient. However, given the powerful electric sanders that run on air, it should be possible to make them as powerful as many of the vibrators on the market.
• Electromagnetic devices – Electromagnetic devices use the magnetic field of the MRI scanner to produce a mechanical force. This vibrator can produce large displacements over a wide frequency range, which can be helpful for people who have high orgasm thresholds. However, these types of vibrators can interact with MRI scanner, producing noise in the data.
• Piezoelectric devices – Piezoceramics use an alternating current from a straight wire to create vibrator. They have have a much wide vibrator range (e.g., 1-300 hertz). They are nonmagnetic, so they do not produce any artifacts in the imaging.

Most fMRI vibrators are not intended to be used to study orgasm.

They are designed for other research, so their compatibility with genitalia, comfortableness, and perceived sexiness and familiarity are not considered. Despite the advanced of fMRI-compatible technology, there have yet to be fMRI compatible vibrators that are optimized for sexual satisfaction. If they are not user-friendly for people with mobility, how are people with mobility issues supposed to use the existing ones?

Just imagine a fMRI-compatible We-Vibe tango, Hitachi Magic Wand, Doxy, a light multi-speed wand vibrator, or bullet replica that looks and feels like your favorite toy. The sex researcher of the future allows you to pick a replica of your favor toy/toys to use during the study. You can use your favor attachment for the actual toy, since it’s an exact replica.

DISCUSSION 

If you had to masturbate inside an fMRI machine, how would you prefer to do so?