Women Who Have More Sex Have Better Developed Brains, A New Study Has Found

Scientists have found that women who like to indulge in bed pleasures have a better developed area of the brain that is associated with the sexual organs. It was pointed out by the NY Post portal.

The study, published in the Journal of Neuroscience, examined the link between touch and brain development in 20 female adults. Volunteers between the ages of 18 and 45 had their clitoris stimulated while their brains were monitored using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The researchers also asked the volunteers how often they had sex in the past year.

For stimulation, a small device was placed in their underwear, which was supposed to vibrate eight times at 10-second intervals. Each woman had an area of the somatosensory cortex of the brain activated. The researchers then measured its thickness and found that it was more "robust" in those volunteers who reported having the most sex.

Does more sex equal more functional brain?

"We found a connection between the frequency of genital intercourse and the thickness of the individually mapped genital field," said study co-author Dr. Christine Heimová, professor of medical psychology at Charité – Universitätsmedizin in Berlin. In other words, the more sex, the bigger this brain area was. Scientists remind that this is not the first study that confirms the positive effect of sex on the brain.

However, research has not been able to confirm whether more intercourse is needed to develop the somatosensory cortex, or whether more intercourse expands it (similar to how a muscle grows with exercise). Scientists lean towards the second option. It has already been found in the past that the more we use a certain part of the brain, the larger it becomes (for example, London taxi drivers have a larger hippocampus).

Conversely, a 2013 study found that people who had experienced traumatic sexual abuse had a smaller area of the brain associated with the genitalia.