Young couple having fun in bed at home in bedroom (iStock)
Researchers say sex doesn’t just make you skinnier, happier and healthier — it also improves memory!
Scientists at McGill University in Canada found young women who engage in traditional intercourse have an easier time remembering things than their less sexually active counterparts.
The team asked 78 heterosexual women between the ages of 18 and 29 to complete a computerized memory paradigm that analyzed how well they could remember abstract words and neutral faces.
They discovered that women who engaged in PVI more often had an easier time remembering words but it didn’t affect their ability to remember faces.
Researchers say this means sex can improve “neurogenesis” in the hippocampus, or growth of nervous tissue, which would yield better memory performance.
Faces aren’t remembered better because those images “rely … on surrounding extra-hippocampal structures” and aren’t related to the hippocampus directly.
“The chemicals involved with signaling reward to the brain — hormones and neurotransmitters — have been shown to be associated with both memory and sexual activity,” Jens Pruessner, a psychology professor at McGill University involved in the study, told Broadly.
Stay up-to-date on the biggest health and wellness news with our weekly recap.