A few points:
1) the study was done in rats, not humans.
2) a cause and effect relationship in humans cannnot be extrapolated from one in rats.
3) the effect of improving mental performance and increasing neurogenesis may not be durable.
How Sex Affects Intelligence, and Vice Versa – Dan Hurley – The Atlantic
macieklew/flickr/wikimedia
Forget mindfulness meditation, computerized working-memory training, and learning a musical instrument; all methods recently shown by scientists to increase intelligence. There could be an easier answer. It turns out that sex might actually make you smarter.
Researchers in Maryland and South Korea recently found that sexual activity in mice and rats improves mental performance and increases neurogenesis (the production of new neurons) in the hippocampus, where long-term memories are formed.
In April, a team from the University of Maryland reported that middle-aged rats permitted to engage in sex showed signs of improved cognitive function and hippocampal function. In November, a group from Konkuk University in Seoul concluded that sexual activity counteracts the memory-robbing effects of chronic stress in mice. “Sexual interaction could be helpful,” they wrote, “for buffering adult hippocampal neurogenesis and recognition memory function against the suppressive actions of chronic stress.”
Here's where the "dream" of screwing your way to smartness weakens:
"Tracey J. Shors, a psychologist at the Center for Collaborative Neuroscience at Rutgers University, has reported that while many activities can increase the rate at which new brain cells are born, only effortful, successful learning increases their survival. As she said at a meeting on 'Cognitive Enhancers' at the Society for Neuroscience in 2012: 'You can make new cells with exercise, Prozac and sex. If you do mental training, you’ll keep alive more cells that you produced. And if you do both, now you have the best of both worlds—you’re making more cells and keeping more alive.'"
Full article How Sex Affects Intelligence, and Vice Versa – Dan Hurley – The Atlantic.
