Brain on Porn (Social #2) - DeYtH Banger (a book to read TXT) 📗

porn the person had used, the less his reward center activated when porn images were flashed on a screen.1 The researchers said, “This is in line with the hypothesis that intense exposure of pornographic stimuli results in a downregulation of the natural neural response to sexual stimuli.”

2. With a dulled reward center, a person can’t feel dopamine’s effects as well as they used to. As a result, the porn a person is using can stop producing the same excitement it did before. This leads many users to go in search of more hard-core material to get a bigger dopamine burst.

3. People with Internet addiction have been found to have less gray matter in several important areas of the brain, including the frontal lobes (which oversee things such as planning, prioritizing, and controlling impulses), the striatum (which is involved with the reward center and with

self-control


and the insula (an area involved with feeling empathy and compassion for others). The vast majority of people with porn addictions have Internet addictions.

4. One study showed that even moderate porn use correlated with having reduced gray matter. Though it did not conclusively show that porn had caused the reduction, the study led researchers to conclude that porn use was the most likely explanation. They even subtitled their study “The Brain on Porn”. The study also found a correction between the length of time spent watching porn and the amount of gray matter reduction in the brain’s reward circuitry, which is important in motivation and decision-making. This reduction is also indicative of having a numbed pleasure response. The researchers interpreted the reduction as an effect of porn use.

5. Addiction researchers have found that brain problems seen in Internet addicts, similar to the problems seen among porn users, improved with abstinence and treatment, indicating that the addiction was the problem, not a preexisting condition.
6. Almost every study on addiction has demonstrated atrophy of multiple areas of the brain, particularly those associated with frontal volitional control and reward salience centers. This is true for addictions to drugs such as cocaine, methamphetamine, and opioids, and also for behavioral conditions associated with pathologic overconsumption of food,10 sex,11 and the Internet.1
7. The journal NeuroImage published a study in 2008 demonstrating that as men are sexually aroused by pornography, the mirror neurons in the brain also fire. This means that the brain

naturally imagines the porn viewer in the scene. The man is not merely responding to the naked woman. His brain is mirroring the pornographic scene with the viewer as the main character, heightening arousal.
8. When a person continually strengthens the brain maps linking sexual excitement to porn, those maps enlarge and can crowd out maps linking sexual excitement to a real person or to real sex.
9. In 2005, Dr. Eric Nestler wrote a landmark paper describing addiction as a dysfunction of the reward centers of the brain. Addiction occurs, he explained, when pleasure-reward pathways are hijacked by certain euphoria-inducing activities, such as eating, taking drugs, or having sex.

Porn and Emotional Health

Studies have found that frequency of porn use correlates with depression, anxiety, stress, and social problems.16 It shouldn’t be surprising that porn use is associated with depression, given that porn has the ability to mess with the user’s dopamine system.17 Research has found that dopamine signaling is a main factor in depression.
2. Dopamine significantly affects our motivation to pursue goals and build relationships, so when the brain can’t feel dopamine’s effects as well, our interest in doing those things can start to slide.

3. Studies have found that porn use is correlated with having less sexual and relationship satisfaction and changed sexual tastes.20

Studies have found that porn use is correlated with lowered quality of life and poorer health.
5. Studies have found that porn use is correlated with intimacy problems.
6. Researchers at Oxford University found that moderate to severe Internet addiction is associated with increased risk of harming oneself.
7. Even moderate porn use is correlated with damage to parts of the brain involved with motivation and decision-making.
8. Researchers have also found that moderate porn use is correlated with shrunken gray matter in parts of the brain that oversee cognitive function.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A study that looked at Internet addicts (pornography was a main online activity for the subjects) found that they suffered from “negative moods” when they went offline.
10. Researchers in Belgium looked at fourteen-year-old boys’ academic performance twice and compared the two scores. They found that “an increased use of Internet pornography decreased boys’ academic performance six months later.”

Porn and Sexual Tastes

1. Studies have found that porn use is correlated with less sexual and relationship satisfaction and changed sexual tastes.
2. Sexual interests are conditionable—we can train them, as Pavlov trained a dog to salivate when it heard a bell.
3. The brain’s reward center doesn’t know the difference between “porn

that’s ‘acceptable’ to use” and “porn that’s not cool”. All it knows is that it likes dopamine. So, when something sick or disturbing pops up and is linked with sexual arousal, the brain stores the connection.“Neurons that fire together wire together, and feeling pleasure in the presence of [something normally unappealing] causes it to get wired into the brain as a source of delight.”
4. As a porn user builds up tolerance “the pleasure of sexual discharge must be supplemented with the pleasure of an aggressive release, and sexual and aggressive images are increasingly mingled—hence the increase in sadomasochistic themes in hardcore porn.”
5. Researchers have found that women become less sexually aroused by repeated viewing of the same porn, but become aroused again when novel porn is introduced.

6. In a 2012 NoFap poll of users, more than half of the respondents agreed with the statement “My tastes became increasingly ‘extreme’ or ‘deviant’.”
7. In a study, researchers found that when male subjects saw the same porn film repeatedly, they were progressively less aroused by it. When researchers introduced a new video after eighteen viewings of the old one, subjects’ arousal spiked.
8. When a person uses porn, his brain wires together what is seen with the feelings of arousal it creates, building new brain maps for both what he thinks is sexy and what he expects from his partner.
9. Researchers have found that the younger the age of first porn use, the more likely a porn consumer is to use bestiality or child porn


Porn and Sexual Violence

1. In a meta-analysis of forty-six studies published from 1962 to 1995, comprising a total sample of 12,323 people, researchers concluded that pornographic material puts one at increased risk of the following:
    • developing sexually deviant tendencies (31 percent increase in risk)
    • committing sexual offenses (22 percent increase in risk)
    • accepting rape myths (31 percent increase in risk)
2. A study that both exposed participants to pornography and asked them about their pornography use found that high pornography use corresponds to higher acceptance of rape myth, acceptance of violence against women, adversarial sex beliefs, likelihood of committing rape and forced sex acts, and sexual callousness.

   High-use viewers who were exposed to nonviolent, dehumanizing pornography had higher scores in reported likelihood of committing rape, sexual callousness, and sexually aggressive behaviors than high-use viewers who weren’t shown pornography as part of the study.
3. “A man may learn that there isn’t any need to pay attention to a woman who is resisting, crying, screaming, struggling, or saying no, because ultimately she wants it and will enjoy it. He can conclude that her resistance is a sham and is part of a sex dance that leads to orgasm. He may assume that even her resistance is sexy and sexually arousing because it is part of the sexual template.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

While every type of pornography (including softcore, hard-core, violent, and rape) is correlated with using verbal coercion, drugs, and alcohol to coerce women into sexual activity,41 the increase in attitudes supportive of sexual violence is greater following exposure to violent porn than it is following exposure to nonviolent porn.”

5. A study that examined sexual violence found that all pornography types (soft-core, hard-core, violent, and rape) are correlated with using verbal coercion, drugs, and alcohol to coerce women sexually. All pornography types, including soft-core, are correlated with the future likelihood of raping a woman. All pornography other than soft-core are correlated with actual rape. Those who had higher past exposure to violent pornography were six times more likely to report having raped someone compared with those who reported low past exposure to pornography.

6. The correlations between circulation rates for Play boy, Penthouse, Chic, Club, Forum, Gallery, Genesis, and Oui and rape rates show that states with higher rates of circulation had higher rates of rape.
7. “A survey of 313 college students indicated that exposure to men’s magazines was significantly associated with lower intentions to seek sexual consent and lower intentions to adhere to decisions about sexual consent.”
8. Researchers have found that the more frequently men used pornography and the more violent it was, the more likely they were to coerce others into sex, including using physical force (rape).


According to a study of domestic violence victims, battery cases include sexual violence when pornography is involved. “The batterer’s use of pornography and alcohol significantly increases a battered woman’s odds of being sexually abused. Pornography alone increases the odds of sexual violence by a factor of almost two.” Forty percent of abused women indicated that their partner used violent pornography. Of those whose partners used pornography, 53 percent said that they had been asked or forced to enact scenes they had been shown, and 26 percent had been reminded of pornography by an abuser during the abuse. Of the 40 percent who had been raped, 73 percent said that their partners had used pornography.

10. Pornography has been shown to have a role in rape cases. In one study, in 193 cases of rape, 24 percent of the rapists mentioned allusions to pornographic material. This is even more significant because these comments were made by respondents without any solicitation or reference to the issue of pornography by the interviewer. The comments followed the same pattern: the assailant referred to pornographic materials he had seen or read and then insisted that the victims not only enjoyed rape but also extreme violence.

Porn and Erectile Dysfunction

1. “It’s hard to know exactly how many young men are suffering from porn-induced ED. But it’s clear that this is a new phenomenon, and it’s not rare.”

2. “I can tell how much porn a man watches as soon as he starts talking candidly about any sexual dysfunction he has. . . . A man who masturbates frequently can soon develop erection problems when he’s with his partner. Add porn to the mix, and he can become unable to have sex. . . . A penis that has grown accustomed to a particular kind of sensation leading to rapid ejaculation will not work the same way when it’s aroused differently. Orgasm is delayed or doesn’t happen at all.”

3. “It starts with lower reactions to porn sites. Then there is a general drop in libido, and in the end it becomes impossible to get an erection.”

4. In Italy, research that looked at porn and its impact on sexual problems in men ages 19 to 25 found that on a scale ranking sexual desire from 1 to 10 (10 being the highest), porn users averaged a score of 4.21, while nonusers came in at 8.02. Erectile function was also 30 percent lower among porn users compared with nonusers, and
those on porn also earned lower scores on overall sexual satisfaction and orgasm function.

 

5. A study done at Cambridge University that looked at men with porn addiction found that more than half of the subjects reported that “as a result of excessive use of sexually explicit materials, they had. . . experienced diminished libido or erectile function specifically in physical relationships with women (although not in relationship to the sexually explicit material).”

 

6. “Pills [such as Viagra] will do something physiologic. They can provide blood flow to the genitalia. But what they can’t do is stimulate the most sexual organ, which is the brain. So when the brain is desensitized, you create a mismatch. And some men will even say, ‘Well I do get an erection’ even in these men who are able to be

treated. Even with that erection, they do feel desensitized. They don’t get pleasure. So it doesn’t treat the pleasure component, and they feel that maybe