Birth Control Pills Boost Brain Size

The birth control pill—which celebrated its 50th birthday earlier this year—has got to be one of the greatest inventions of all time. It prevents unwanted pregnancies and helps to stave off certain types of ovarian cancer, and now a recent study done by scientists from Austria’s Salzburg University indicates that taking the pill can increase the size of certain parts of a woman’s brain by about 3 percent. Certain brain sections of the female study participants on birth control were found to be larger than those of the women not taking contraceptives—including the “conservation hub,” which is an area of the brain that is crucial to memory and social skills. The study was published in the journal Brain Research, and, according to the Salzburg University scientists who conducted it, the results were the same, regardless of the type or brand of pill the women were taking. So now we’re more convinced than ever that birth control pills totally rule.

The fact that this comes on the heels of our report a few weeks ago on the study that revealed that having sex increases brain size makes this news all the sweeter. And while we’re not scientists, we can’t help but conclude that women who take oral contraceptives and have sex regularly must be some of the smartest ladies around—and who doesn’t love a highly intelligent, sexually liberated woman? Certainly not us. Hopefully scientists will continue to investigate all the ways that sex can benefit our minds, because that’s the type of research we can really get behind.