It took the AIDS epidemic to convince many governments and funding bodies that studying sex was important and respectable. 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 and prejudices of human societies. 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. Neuroscience can ask itself, therefore, why it has contributed so little to understanding human sexuality. 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). But the personal, social and legal aspects of sexual behaviour are a pervasive pre-occupation in all humans.
No-one, wrote Frank Beach, a notable contributor to the experimental study of hormones and sexual behaviour, ever died from lack of sex.
