Can sex make you smarter?

Sexual activity could help new brain cells to grow according to research carried out on mice and rats.

Sex could make you smarter after new research has found it can encourage the growth of brain cells.

Researchers in America and South Korea have found that sexual activity in mice and rats improved cognitive function.

Psychologists at the University of Maryland found that sexual experience enhanced the number of newly generated neurons in the hippocampus, where long-term memories are made.

The rats were allowed half an hour of sexual behaviour a day which was monitored and videotaped.

The scientists tested middle-aged rats and found that sexual experience restored age-related decline in brain function to young adult levels.

This, they concluded, suggested that repeated sexual experience can stimulate adult neurogenesis (the development of neurons) and restore cognitive function in middle-aged rats.

However they also found that if sexual activity was stopped, the improvements in cognitive function were lost.

A team from Kontuk University in South Korea concluded that sex successfully counteracted the negative affects of stress on brain development.

They found that stress was one of the biggest inhibitors of neurogenesis but that sex helped to restore the function.

They concluded: "Sexual interaction could be helpful for buffering adult hippocampal neurogenesis and recognition memory function against the suppressive actions of chronic stress."

However, according to The Atlantic, watching pornography, could be harmful to the brain.

Viewing pornographic images can interfere with people's memory- in particular their ability to multitask.

A recent study by psychologists at the University of Duisburg – Essen in Germany tested the response of individuals who had access to pornographic stimuli against those who did not.

They found that working memory performance was worse in those who were given pornographic stimuli.

While having sex may make you smarter, smarter people do not necessarily have more sex according to research.

A study from the University of Pennsylvania found that high working memory decreases the likelihood of becoming sexually active early.

Source: TELEGRAPH.CO.UK