This is Your Brain on Sex

The Science Behind the Search for Love

By: Kayt Sukel

Narrated by: Tamara Marston

Philosophers, theologians, artists, and boy bands have waxed poetic for centuries about the nature of love. But what does the brain have to say about the way we carry our hearts? In the wake of a divorce, science writer and single mother Kayt Sukel made herself a guinea pig in the labs of some unusual love experts to find out. This Is Your Brain on Sex is her lively and hilarious examination of the big questions about love and sex, previously published in hardcover as Dirty Minds.

Each chapter of this edgy romp through the romantic brain looks at a different aspect of love above the belt. What in your brain makes you love someone - or simply lust after them? Why do good girls like bad boys? Is monogamy practical? How thin is that line between love and hate? After listening to this gimlet-eyed look at love, sex, and the brain, you'll never look at romance the same way again.

©2012 Kayt Sukel (P)2013 Audible, Inc.

I Am Rounding 3 1/2 Stars Up To 4...

to be gracious. This is a mostly entertaining book, and sure, what warm-blooded nerd can turn away from a neurological look at sex? (Though Sukel can't seem to decide, even in her title, if she means "sex" or "love"--they are, of course, not always the same at all, and the latter word can mean all sorts of things--and tracking occurrences in the brain is hard enough without a narrow definition of terms.) As I said, 3 1/2 stars... My 4 star review would go like this: interesting look at the hormonal and neurological aspects of sex and romance, though there are certainly better books if you are looking to really learn something about the brain and neurology (and the vagaries of actually tracking the direct brain-experience connection in an exact way), and her vignettes from her own life were kind of funny. My 3 star review would run like this: what could have been a more in-depth look at the brain and how the neurology of experience works sometimes falls back into the realm of easy factoids and pop science, and I wish she hadn't relied so much on anecdotal self-report. In short, I like the book more or less depending on how much I decide to expect from it, and I can't quite decide. I kind of knew from the title this wasn't going to be Ramachandran, Chang or Gazziniga, but I was kind of hoping it would be. So maybe... 3 and 7/16ths.

Don’t be fooled by the title

This book has very little to do with what happens in the brain as related to sex. One chapter in orgasm and the rest attempts to define “love” and parallels human monogamy with that of the prairie vol. of course evidence presented shows the proof that humans are not monogamous and that love (a human construct) is miraculously complex and hard to define. So please don’t be fooled by the title of this book as it is not as advertised. Good job marketing though.