Things You Should Know About Pornography and the Brain

 



“Because the human brain is the biological anchor of our psychological experience, it is helpful to understand how it operates.” says William M. Struthers, associate professor of psychology at Wheaton College. “Knowing how it is wired together and where it is sensitive can help us understand why pornography affects people the way it does.” Here are 9 things you should know about pornography affects the brain.
1. Sexually explicit material triggers mirror neurons in the male brain. These neurons, which are involved with the process for how to mimic a behavior, contain a motor system that correlates to the planning out of a behavior.  In the case of pornography, this mirror neuron system triggers the arousal, which leads to sexual tension and a need for an outlet. “The unfortunate reality is that when he acts out (often by masturbating), this leads to hormonal and neurological consequences, which are designed to bind him to the object he is focusing on,” says Struthers. “In God's plan, this would be his wife, but for many men it is an image on a screen. Pornography thus enslaves the viewer to an image, hijacking the biological response intended to bond a man to his wife and therefore inevitably loosening that bond.”

2. In men, there are five primary chemicals involved in sexual arousal and response. The one that likely plays the most significant role in pornography addiction is dopamine. Dopamine plays a major role in the brain system that is responsible for reward-driven learning. Every type of reward that has been studied increases the level of dopamine transmission in the brain, and a variety of addictive drugs, including stimulants such as cocaine, amphetamine, and methamphetamine, act directly on the dopamine system. Dopamine surges when a person is exposed to novel stimuli, particularly if it is sexual, or when a stimuli is more arousing than anticipated. Because erotic imagery triggers more dopamine than sex with a familiar partner, exposure to pornography leads to “arousal addiction” and teaches the brain to prefer the image and become less satisfied with real-life sexual partners.


3. Why do men seek out a variety of new explicit sexual images rather than being satisfied with the same ones? The reason is attributed to the Coolidge effect, a phenomenon seen in mammalian species whereby males (and to a lesser extent females) exhibit renewed sexual interest if introduced to new receptive sexual partners, even after refusing sex from prior but still available sexual partners. This neurological mechanism is one of the primary reasons for the abundance and addictiveness of Internet pornography.

4. Overstimulation of the reward circuitry—such as occurs with repeated dopamine spikes related to viewing pornography—creates desensitization.  “When dopamine receptors drop after too much stimulation, the brain doesn't respond as much, and we feel less reward from pleasure. That drives us to search even harder for feelings of satisfaction—for example, by seeking out more extreme sexual stimuli, longer porn sessions, or more frequent porn viewing—thus further numbing the brain.

5. “The psychological, behavioral, and emotional habits that form our sexual character will be based on the decisions we make,” says Struthers. “Whenever the sequence of arousal and response is activated, it forms a neurological memory that will influence future processing and response to sexual cues. As this pathway becomes activated and traveled, it becomes a preferred route—a mental journey—that is regularly trod. The consequences of this are far-reaching.”


6. What makes Internet porn unique? Asaph mic identifies a number of reasons, including:
(1) Internet porn offers extreme novelty;
 (2) Unlike food and drugs, there are almost no physical limitations to Internet porn consumption;
 (3) With Internet porn one can escalate both with more novel “partners” and by viewing new and unusual genres;
 (4) Unlike drugs and food, Internet porn doesn't eventually activate the brain's natural aversion system; and
 (5) The age users start watching porn. A teen's brain is at its peak of dopamine production and neuroplasticity, making it highly vulnerable to addiction and rewiring.

THE MORE PORN YOU WATCH, THE MORE YOU NEED

Both having sex and watching porn causes dopamine, the neurotransmitter responsible for reward and pleasure, to be released.

But repeatedly causing this surge in dopamine – by regularly watching pornography – means the brain become desensitised to its effects.

A study published in JAMA Psychiatry in 2014 found regularly viewing pornography seemed to dull the response to sexual stimulation over time.

 This means the brain needs more dopamine in order to feel the same ‘high’, which causes a person to watch more porn, German researchers found.

And a 2011 study, published in Psychology Today, found that these dopamine spikes mean porn-users start needing increasingly extreme experiences to become sexually aroused.

After being exposed to so many lurid images in films, men have become de-sensitised and are increasingly unable to become excited by ordinary sexual encounters.

Pornography is creating a generation of young men who are hopeless in the bedroom, the report concluded.

PORN SHRINKS THE BRAIN 

Men who watch pornography may be shrinking their brains, the German researchers described above discovered. 

The striatum area of the brain, linked with the motivation and reward response, shrank in size the more porn a person viewed.

 

The study marked the first time researchers found a possible link between regularly viewing pornography and physical harm. 

However, they noted that is possible that people who spend more time looking at pornography are born with a certain type of brain.

PORN ADDICTS HAVE MINDS LIKE DRUG ADDICTS

When porn addicts watch X-rated material, the ‘addiction’ part of the brain lights up on scans, Cambridge University researchers discovered in 2013.

The brains of young men who are obsessed by online pornography ‘lit up like Christmas trees’ upon being shown erotic images, a pioneering study has found.

The area stimulated – the part of the brain involved in processing reward, motivation and pleasure – is the same part that is highly active among drug and alcohol addicts.

A year later, another study by the same University found sex addicts who watched porn from an early age had three regions of the brain that were more active than their counterparts who were not addicted to sex.

The ventral striatum, dorsal anterior cingulate and amygdala – were active in the sex addicts – and experts said these are the regions that are also particularly activated in drug addicts when shown drug stimuli.

The ventral striatum is involved in processing reward and motivation, whilst the dorsal anterior cingulate is implicated in anticipating rewards and drug craving.

The amygdala is involved in processing the significance of events and emotions.