Sex Can Wipe Your Memory

"Mind-blowing" sex is something we all strive for. Normal sex will never do. We want sex that will destroy our brains and render us incapable of functioning like a normal human. We want our cognitive processes permanently disrupted by the force of an earth-shattering orgasm that causes an earthquake in Beijing, killing thousands.

Sounds exaggerated, but at least one part of that desire is kind of true. Sex, it turns out, can wipe your memory clean. Transient global amnesia is a strange phenomenon in which a person's memory is almost completely erased for a few hours before it inevitably returns. It affects only 3 to 5 people per 100,000 every year, and scientists have no clue why it happens but know at least one activity that triggers it–porking, AKA sex, for those that aren't into creepy, unappealing synonyms.

A 54-year-old woman from Washington, D.C. became the best example of sex-induced Transient global amnesia. The unnamed woman woke up one morning with no memory of her recent past. She knew who and where she was, but the previous 24-hours weren't even tequila-bender blur, they didn't even exist in her mind. In her mind, she went from Thursday to Saturday with no Friday. Even her newly formed memories, the ones she was forming after she woke up, became instantly hazy.

The next day she visited the emergency room of Georgetown University Hospital and, with a clearer head, was able to pinpoint the moment her brain wiring shorted out like a fork in a power outlet. She remembered that she stopped remembering immediately after she had sex with her husband. If she had been cheating on her husband she could have had an amazing excuse for not remembering her infidelity, and probably even a doctor's note to back her up.

There are some theories that attempt to explain transient global amnesia–for instance, some scientists believe contracting our abdomens during sex creates an excess of de-oxygenated blood in our brains–but none are definitive explanations.

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.

By Lucy Kinder / Source: The Telegraph