The week in silly studies: Watching porn can cause memory loss

People who are addicted to watching pornography online are at an increased risk of suffering short-term memory loss.

This is according to new research out of Germany where scientists conducted studies on 28 heterosexual men.

We're not sure what compelled the researchers to conduct this study, but they say it could have real-world implications.

The men had to look at a number of images, some pornographic and some nonsexual, reports the Daily Mail. While looking at each image, they had to tap a 'yes' or 'no' button to indicate if they had seen the same image four slides earlier. The volunteers got a lot more wrong after looking at a pornographic image — they pressed the correct button 80 per cent of the time if they viewed a clean slideshow and only 67 per cent of the time when viewing a pornographic gallery.

[ Last week's silly study: Drinking beer can fight off the common cold ]

The researchers are hoping the findings will help psychologists and psychiatrists understand why Internet-porn addicts miss appointments and forget to sleep.

"Sexual arousal interferes with working memory, an important facet of executive functioning," author Christian Laier, a graduate studying under psychologist Matthias Brand, told The Daily Mail. "Sexual arousal and its impacts on cognitive processes might explain parts of these negative effects."

Now, we haven't done any formal studies, but have noticed sexual arousal also leads to making bad decisions at a bar.

Previous research has shown watching pornography can cause parts of the brain to shut down because blood needs to be redirected to the parts of the brain responsible for sexual arousal.

While the loss of short-term memory may seem pretty bad, if you are one of these people, chances are you won't remember much of this article in a few hours so there is no reason to worry.

(Getty Images photo of Cami Parker and Bunny Ranch founder Dennis Hof)

The week in silly studies is a feature that appears each Tuesday.
It is not intended to mock real science.

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