“The latest study, carried out at Wayne State University in Detroit and presented to the American Society for Reproductive Medicine conference in Denver, highlights differences in mental processing in women who have low sex drives. Its author, Dr Michael Diamond, said it suggested that HSDD was a genuine physical problem. “This disorder is now a recognized medical condition, but it remains a mystery whether there is one cause or several”He recruited 19 women who had been diagnosed with the condition, and compared their brain responses with those of seven others using a functional magnetic resonance imaging scanner, which can measure levels of activation in different parts of the brain by detecting increased blood flow. The women were asked to watch a screen for half an hour, with everyday television programs interspersed with erotic videos. In the seven women who did not have the HSDD diagnosis, increased activity in the insular cortices – parts of the brain believed to be involved in the processing of emotion – could be seen. The same did not happen in the women with HSDD.”