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| Top row is a sex addicts brain on porn... |
A scientific study at The University of Cambridge proved that looking at pornography gives sex addicts the same high as a drug addicts when they get high. The study participants (all males) were shown a series of short videos featuring either sexually explicit content or sports while their brain activity was monitored using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which uses a blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) signal to measure brain activity. The researchers found that three regions in particular were more active in the brains of the people with compulsive sexual behavior (CSB) compared with the healthy volunteers. Significantly, these regions – the ventral striatum, dorsal anterior cingulate and amygdala – were regions that are also particularly activated in drug addicts when shown drug stimuli:
“In this study of sexually explicit, erotic and non-sexual cues, individuals with CSB and those without showed similarities and differences with respect to patterns of neural responsivity and relationships between subjective and neural responses. Sexual desire or wanting of the explicit sexual cues was linked to a dACC-ventral striatal-amygdala functional network evident across both groups and more strongly activated and linked to sexual desire in the CSB group. Sexual desire or subjective measures of wanting appeared dissociated from liking, in line with incentive-salience theories of addiction in which there exists enhanced wanting but not liking of salient rewards. We further observed a role for age in which younger age, particularly in the CSB group, was associated with greater activity in the ventral striatum.”
In other words, both sets of males, those with a compulsive sex addition, and those without, responded with increased activity in the brain’s addiction centers; although, those with CSB reacted more severely. Furthermore, the exhibited brain activity went beyond a mere “liking” response to one that mirrors those pattered by drug addicts.
Link to study: