London - Next time your other half says they’re not in the mood for a romantic interlude, try telling them that it could make them brainier.
Although it sounds like a clever ploy, psychologists say that making love can boost intelligence.
That’s in addition to previous research which shows that sex not only helps to decrease your stress levels but also burns up calories.
The latest research, conducted on mice, found that love-making greatly increased the creation of neurons located within the hippocampus, an area of the brain that is responsible for the formation of long-term memory.
And stopping the mice from having sex led to a fall-off in their intelligence, the psychologists from the University of Maryland were quoted as saying.
“We discovered that even though there had been the production of new neurons, the cognitive abilities acquired during the experiment decreased once the mice were subjected to long periods without sexual activity,” they said.
Increased sexual activity floods an individual’s brain cells with oxygen, they noted. Neurons are a specialised type of cell which make up the basic building blocks of the nervous system.
Further evidence in support of the team’s discovery came from a study by Konkuk University in South Korea.
According to that research, sex increases intellectual functions by buffering the creation of neurons in the hippocampal region, countering the detrimental effects of extreme stress on the neurons. - Daily Mail