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Dr. Angela Willey In May I attended a great conference, the 4th biennial conference of the Association for Feminist Epistemologies, Methodologies, Metaphysics, and Science Studies (FEMMSS) . At the conference, I heard a wonderful plenary talk by Dr. Angela Willey and her colleagues. Dr. Willey is one of our own - a recent (2010) graduate of Emory’s doctoral program in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. In her work, she examines the cultural assumptions underpinning contemporary neuroscience research on monogamy and the social implications of this research. At the conference, I asked Dr. Willey if she would agree to be interviewed about her work for the Neuroethics Blog, and she graciously agreed. Before sharing what she said, I am just going to give you a little background about Dr. Willey and about the neuroscience research on monogamy that she analyzes. About Dr. Willey Dr. Willey has a B.A. from Fordham University and an M.S. in Gender Studies from the London School of Economi...

I have wanted to write about this issue for a few months now and have finally gotten around to it. Science writer Kayt Sukel created a small splash in the blogosphere in January when she wrote a few blog posts (see here and here ) about her experiences orgasming in an MRI machine (or, as she puts it, “coming for science”) as part of a study conducted by Barry Komisaruk and Nan Wise at Rutgers University. Sukel’s posts were intended to serve as teasers for her book, Dirty Minds: How Our Brains Influence Love, Sex, and Relationships (full disclosure, I haven’t read her book yet). For an earlier account of an attempt to “come for science” see science writer Mary Roach’s highly entertaining book, Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex . About the Research and Its Contributions: Barry Komisaruk has been a pioneer in the use of fMRI to study orgasm (for an example of his work, see here ), and a number of other researchers have also used PET and fMRI technologies to try to understand...

A number of potentially problematic themes run throughout public discussions about sexuality in this country. One such potentially problematic theme revolves around innate sex/gender differences in sexuality. I see stories in the media almost every week about how men and women are almost diametric opposites when it comes to sexuality as a result of evolutionary pressures. In these articles, which are often reporting on scientific studies, the men are invariably sex-hungry and desperate to procreate with any available woman, while the women are invariably choosy and determined to find a “good provider” (for examples, see here , here , and here ). I suspect these articles (and the studies they draw from) suffer from confirmation bias, developing elaborate evolutionary rationales to justify what seem like outdated stereotypes. Another such theme revolves around the determinative role of hormones in sexual desire and activity. In a fascinating (although now somewhat out-of-date) study , so...

Given the subject of last month’s Journal Club meeting and the current poll, I wanted to take a moment to talk about issues of volition, cognitive impairment and impulse control in law, especially as they relate to sex offenses, and the way neuroscience research is beginning to impact these relationships. I am going to consider the following as a general question, rather than analyzing the details of the particular case: [1] If a man is discovered to have committed sex crimes against children due to uncontrollable pedophilic urges, and those urges were proven to be caused by a brain tumor, is he guilty of his crimes? As I write this, votes on the blog have “not guilty” beating “guilty” by 32 to 25. Honestly, the number of “not guilty” votes surprised me a bit, as there really isn’t a question about whether or not he committed the crimes. As I thought about it, I realized that perhaps for some the question of guilt isn’t whether he did it, but whether or not he should be held respo...