We have a lot of cliché phrases about how sex takes place in your mind more than your body.
“The most powerful sex organ is the brain” comes to mind.
And it’s true.
Sex is more mental than physical. The key to good sex isn't just about what you do with your body. It's also about what you do with your mind.
What Are Erogenous Zones?
Erogenous zones are non-genital parts of the body that can produce an erotic response when touched, kissed, loved, caressed, or stroked.
Breasts are a common erogenous zone for many women. When they are touched, kissed, or massaged, it can often lead to sexual arousal. The nipples are particularly sensitive.
Other common erogenous zones include the neck and anus. These areas can be quite pleasurable when stimulated correctly.
From toes to armpits, from hands to kneecaps, some people report erotic sensations in places far from sexual organs.
These areas are loaded with C-Tactile Afferents1, which are fibers and receptors in the skin that respond vigorously to certain types of touch.
I’ve created a spreadsheet with the full list of erogenous zones here. It shows how often people find each one erotic.
Why Do Erogenous Zones Exist?
There are many armchair theories about why we have erogenous zones. Some believe they are areas of the body that are more sensitive to touch because they have a higher concentration of nerve endings. Others think erogenous zones are areas that are culturally associated with sexual arousal and pleasure.
Simple version: feet turn some people on, so they find having their feet rubbed erotic.
This view is a bit limited.
There are plenty of people out there who love their nipples to be sucked, but they might not be too enthralled by the idea of sucking someone else’s nipples.
There are plenty of other people who love anilingus who may not want their buttholes licked.
The list of examples could fill an encyclopedia—or perhaps the DSM-V.
S1 Theory
In the science world, the main theory was called S1. This was developed in the late 1990s by Vilayanur Ramachandran. S1 theory2 says that “maps” within our brains correlate to different areas of our bodies.
These areas can be found in the primary somatosensory cortex (S1) map. There’s a unique map for the genital region (this is true), and, the hypothesis goes, the closer a body part’s “map” is to the genital area, the more erotic we’ll perceive the sensations from that body part.
It proposes that some spots on the map suffer from “leakage” into other map areas when the nervous system gets confused about where the stimulus is coming from. The hypothesis explained why some people felt erotically aroused by someone touching their feet.
Later Research
Further studies3 revealed this not to be the case. Only a few people felt erotic undertones when their feet were touched.
Studies also revealed that erogenous zones are mostly the same no matter who you are. Your age, gender, culture, or even sex and sexual preferences don't matter. The body parts we find erogenous are just about the same as everybody else.
While the S1 region of the brain may not be responsible for erogenous zones, it’s likely a different brain map that we don’t yet understand entirely is at work.
It’s hypothesized that we evolved this as a social species to help us maintain bonds with one another. We know this because the human response to erogenous zones is temperature-dependent. If someone’s touch is too hot or too cold, anything outside the range of average body temperature, it doesn’t work.
It’s romantic and sad that we’ve evolved this big, beautiful brain capable of experiencing tremendous closeness and joy from non-sexual touching, yet, we’ve developed a society that frowns on this touch.
Sex Without Touch
With pleasurable sensations, touch is not always necessary. There are many ways to experience pleasure without even laying a finger on yourself or your partner.
Eroticism is both mental and social.
A 2018 study asked couples to touch one another in both erogenous and non-erogenous zones (the neck and the forehead). The study investigated what happens in each person’s mind when they touch or are touched by their partners.
They instructed participants to gently rub and pat their partners (rubbing stimulates the tissue better than patting).
They also told participants to imagine being touched in an erogenous zone to get an A/B comparison between purely mental acts of stimulation and strictly physical ones.
This study found that we’ve got it all wrong!
We focused so much on the body parts themselves we forgot that who and how matter. Who’s doing the touching and how they’re doing it. And soft touch goes both ways.
They found that even the “givers” showed higher scores on both the pleasantness of the experience and sexual arousal ratings when gentle stroking took place in their partner’s erogenous zones.
Researchers concluded:
We explored actual stimulation of an erogenous (neck) vs. non-erogenous zone (forehead), with the aim of assessing subjective pleasantness and erogeneity. We tested romantic couples, which allowed us to address the reciprocal property of touch in an ecologically valid setup. In line with previous research, the results showed that sensual touch was perceived as more pleasant and more sexually arousing than neutral touch. Similarly, we also found that touch on the neck (erogenous) was rated as more pleasant and sexually arousing compared to touch on the forehead (non-erogenous).
They also showed that the imagined slow stroking of erogenous zones increased scores on pleasantness.
Our findings provide the first direct evidence that imagining sensual touch was perceived as more pleasant than all other types of touch, suggesting that pleasantness induced by merely imagining touch may be driven, at least in part, by top-down processes, guided by learned expectations of sensory pleasure [25–26].
Interpersonal touch is generally present in romantic interactions, therefore most people have memories of the pleasant state that sensual, CT-optimal stimulation elicits. In contrast to previous findings, we also found that pleasantness was higher when participants were asked to imagine sensual stimulation being applied to erogenous as compared to non-erogenous zones.
In simple terms, erogenous zones are more complex than we initially thought. We have to uncover the biological elements of the equation, but we also need to unravel the social and psychological dynamics that make non-genital erotic touch possible.
How can you implement this into your sex life? It’s easy to forget about erogenous zones. We’re inundated with more overt sexual messaging. It’s easy to lose touch with the subtleties in a loud society. Make a conscious effort to implement them into your sex life and I assure you, it will pay big dividends.
Human C-Tactile Afferents Are Tuned to the Temperature of a Skin-Stroking Caress, Rochelle Ackerley et al., National Institutes of Health and The Journal of Neuroscience
The Neuroscience of Erogenous Zones, Bangor University
Reports of intimate touch: erogenous zones and somatosensory cortical organization, Oliver Turnbull et al., National Institutes of Health and Cortex