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Negative correlation between hours of pornography consumption per week and functional-connectivity map of the right striatum in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. |
A July 2014 study from the “Journal of the American Medical Association Psychiatry” found that men ages 21 to 45 who frequently watch pornography — defined as at least four hours a week — had less activity in the areas of the brain associated with sexual stimuli than those who watched less. According to the study:
“We found a significant negative association between reported pornography hours per week and gray matter volume in the right caudate corrected for multiple comparisons as well as with functional activity during a sexual cue–reactivity paradigm in the left putamen. Functional connectivity of the right caudate to the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex was negatively associated with hours of pornography consumption.”
In other words, prolonged exposure to porn negatively impacts the putamen structure in the brain; and the putamen regulates dopamine levels in the body; dopamine is a hormone and neurotransmitter that plays an important role in motivation, arousal, cognition, and reward, as well as a number of basic lower-level functions such as sexual gratification. As a result, the more you look at pornography, the less satisfying it will become. And, although the researchers of this study do not implicitly support the following, I would imply that the study does prove that porn perpetuates a sort of “thrill-kill” phenomena in which the user needs to continually delve into more perverse forms of porn in order to achieve the same high. And, this is what inevitably leads men into viewing depictions of sex-violence, sadomasochism, rape, homosexuality, and child abuse.
Link to original report: