More sex identified with better developed brains in women: Study
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For women, getting more in bed can literally go to your head.
According to research published in the Journal of Neuroscience, women who have better developed brains also had more sex.
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The study, involving 20 healthy women between the ages of 18 and 45, identified the brain region linked to genital touch in women, which was a subject of debate.
To locate the region of the brain in the somatosensory cortex — the area that receives and processes sensory information from the body –women were stimulated with a small round object applied on top of the underwear in the area of their clitoris.
During this process, their brains were scanned using functional magnetic resonance imaging.
Researchers found the area of the brain that receives information from women’s genitals was beside the region reserved for the hips – which is the same for men. However, the precise location varied among all women.
“It’s completely under studied, how the female genitals are represented in the somatosensory cortex in humans, and whether it has at all the capacity to change in relation to experience or use,” co-author Christine Heim, a professor of medical psychology at Charite University Hospital in Berlin, told Agence France-Presse.
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Women were asked about their sexual frequency in the past year, and their sexual history. Then researchers mapped out the 10 most activated points in the brain and measured them.
“We found an association between the frequency of genital intercourse and the thickness of the individually mapped genital field,” said Heim.
Women who had more sex had larger brain regions.
Researchers say more studies need to be done because the findings fail to answer questions like whether more sex leads to better developed brains, or vice versa.
But established research points to plasticity, where regular use of certain parts of the brain allow it to increase in size.
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