Physical evidence of addiction processes is showing up in the brains of avid Internet video-gamers. What's more, use of online erotica has greater potential for becoming compulsive than online gaming according to Dutch researchers.
According to NIDA head Nora Volkow, MD, and her team these three physical changes define addiction: desensitization (numbing of the brain's pleasure response), sensitization, and hypofrontality. These same brain changes (which are now showing up in Internet addicts) also show up in pathological gamblers and drug abusers.
The characteristics that make Internet porn and video gaming so popular are the same characteristics that give both the power to dysregulate dopamine in some brains. Novelty and 'stimuli that violate expectations' both release dopamine, sending the brain the message that the activity is more valuable than it is.
Today's porn also delivers both, and constantly ratchets them up. There's unending novelty and something more startling always beckoning just beyond the next click. There's also the dopamine released by the "hunt" for the perfect shot. Novelty, shock and hunting absorb the user's attention because they raise dopamine levels. Intense focus allows users to override their natural satiety mechanisms and, often, to rewire their brains in ways that take a lot of effort to undo. Addiction is "pathological learning."
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