Brain Advance Access published online on October 24, 2008
Brain, doi:10.1093/brain/awn257
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© The Author (2008). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Guarantors of Brain. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org
Scientific Commentary |
Who do we think are: the brain and gender identity
Cambridge Centre for Brain Repair, Department of Clinical Neurosciences and Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience, University of Cambridge E-mail: jh24@cam.ac.uk
| The first 10% of the full text of this article appears below. |
No-one, wrote Frank Beach, a notable contributor to the experimental study of hormones and sexual behaviour, ever died from lack of sex. But the personal, social and legal aspects of sexual behaviour are a pervasive pre-occupation in all humans. The variety and vagaries of sex can have severe implications, and the existence of homosexuality and disorders of gender identity demand some sort of explanation (Bancroft, 2008
). Neuroscience can ask itself, therefore, why it has contributed so little to understanding human sexuality. One reason is our overall ignorance about the brain, which hinders attempts to relate particular patterns of brain activity to an observable behaviour in a way that contributes to understanding. Another is the effect of sexual mores on the study of sexuality itself: studying sex is still considered a slightly risqué career, and made difficult by the politics, constraints
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