People have been interested in sex since, well, forever — but in 2011, we couldn't seem to stop talking about controversial contraception methods, fake orgasms, and who was sexting whom.
During the past 365-or-so days, scientists, talking heads, and Americans everywhere have been heeding the sage advice of that early nineties hip-hop trio, Salt-n-Pepa: We talked about sex.
Yep, we talked about sex a lot. Whether our PG-13-rated conversations were spurred by scientific research (oh, so that’s
So we rounded up the top 10 sex and relationship stories that made the biggest, um, bang. How was 2011 for you?
This Is Your Brain on Sex
In 1543, Nicolaus Copernicus discovered that the Earth moved. Isaac Newton theorized gravity in 1666. And in 2011, scientists mapped the female orgasm (in 3D, nonetheless!).
We nailed down the solar system and gravity years ago, but the female orgasm has been mystifying people throughout history. So to find out what really happens to our brains during the big O, researcher Barry Komisaruk, PhD, a professor of psychology at Rutgers University, used an MRI machine to record the brain activity of female participants during orgasm. At the Society for Neuroscience conference in Washington, D.C., Dr. Komisaruk presented a 3D, multi-colored film portraying the more than 80 regions of a woman’s brain that become activated during sexual climax. Among others, the brain’s sensory regions lit up, followed by the insula (an area that’s also active in pain, possibly explaining why women are less sensitive to pain when having an orgasm), the hypothalamus (which releases oxytocin, also known as the “love hormone”), and (finally!) the brain’s pleasure center, known as the nucleus accumbens.
Yep, Women Still Fake Orgasms
To all the men out there living in the dark, it's time you knew: Most women have faked an orgasm at some point in their sex lives (and that means there's a good chance that you — yes, you — have been duped). In fact, research shows that as many as two-thirds of females have 'fessed up to faking it.
But according to one headline-making study in 2011, the reason women bluff in the bedroom may surprise you. According to research published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior
This isn't scientists' first attempt at figuring out why
Men Don't Really Think About Sex Every Seven Seconds
Here’s one stale myth that research published this year may help retire: Turns out, most guys don’t
However, they do think about sex more often than women do, according to a study published in the Journal of Sex Research
By comparison, men thought about food about 18 times a day and sleep about 11 times a day; women reflected on sex 10 times, food 15 times, and sleep 8.5 times every day on average.
Sunday, September 23, 2018