Female sexuality has been ignored for a large part of history , and this can also be seen in the scientific progress made on the subject. A paradigmatic case is that of sexual enhancers: there is still no version of Viagra for women that can be compared to its male analogue in terms of effectiveness and mild side effects.

However, this could be changing now, with the emergence of an alternative that consists of a type of intervention that is not based on drugs and that acts directly on the brain.

The Addyi Fiasco

It wasn’t that long ago that the pill that was unofficially called “the female Viagra” began to be marketed.

Its real name is Addyi, and although the press spread its properties with enthusiasm, it soon proved to be very ineffective in increasing sexual desire, and it has also been found that its side effects are too intense to consider this product a hopeful alternative.

These disappointing results have made many researchers decide to tackle the problem from scratch, without taking too much for granted. One of the methods of sexual empowerment for women that is being tested and that offers the most promising results is, for example, a tool that is not even based on the release of an active ingredient through pills. In this case, the key is to stimulate parts of the brain by means of signals that act through the scalp and the bones of the skull.

Viagra for women, acting directly on the brain

This promising tool has two different variants, although both are based on the use of electric shocks on parts of the brain related to pleasure experimentation and the reward system, all without surgery.

An occasional help to feel more desire

One of these two tools is called Direct Current Stimulation (DCS) and consists of placing a device on the head, which sends a diffused electrical signal for about 20 minutes over strategically chosen areas of the brain.

This stimulation does not in itself serve to increase sexual desire; its function is to make a greater variety of stimuli collected by the senses be appreciated as sexually suggestive . In other words, DCS serves to predispose.

An option for permanently increasing libido in women

The second option being worked on to intervene in the lack of sexual desire in women is called Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS). This is a tool that began being studied basically as a resource to treat depression resistant to therapies (proving effective in that type of problem). Basically, TMS consists of the creation of a magnetic field around the head through which the areas of the brain that are related to the reward system are stimulated. All this, without pain.

Specifically, it boosts the activity of those brain regions that react to pleasure and in general, that which is perceived as a reward (and which we therefore want to repeat). It is precisely these areas that show less activity than normal in women who notice that they perceive a problem in their lack of sexual desire.

In this way, TMS allows those areas of the brain that remain in an unusually low state of activation in women with a lack of sexual desire to become activated as they do in most people, but without crossing that threshold. In other words, there would be no risk of going too far and generating the opposite problem.

The results obtained by using this technique are very promising. In an experiment whose results have been published in PLoS ONE and in which 20 men and women participated, it was found that MST made the activation patterns of the parts of the brain that mediate the appearance of pleasure significantly more intense.

Stimulate the brain, but without drugs

Both methods of brain stimulation have many advantages. Unlike drug treatment, they go to the root of the problem without going through the metabolism of substances circulating in the blood, and therefore their side effects should be much less.

Furthermore, these two options under development pose different approaches . TMS is used with the aim of introducing long-term changes in brain function after a series of sessions in the clinic, whereas DCS proposes an instant solution whose effects only last a few minutes, just as conventional Viagra would.

Of course, there will always be the debate as to whether lack of sexual desire is itself a clinical problem or not; it may be that the problem is not the person’s. However, that discussion cannot overshadow the fact that developing solutions for women who want to increase their sexual desire is beneficial.