Porn

Watchingpornography could beshrinkparts of thebrainlinked to reward
andmotivation.This isaccording to a German study that found menwho
watched a lot of porntendedto be lazier. The resultsprovide thefirst
directlinkbetweenpornography and a lack ofmotivation followingsexual
stimulationDr Simone Kühn, the study’slead authorfrom the Max Planck
Institute in Berlin, said it was thefirstevidence for alinkbetween porn
consumption and reductions inbrain size andbrainactivity inresponse to
sexual stimuli.But the study can’tprove porn-watching causeschanges to
thebrain,she said.

PORN SHOULD BE TREATED LIKE DRINK DRIVING, EXPERTS ARGUE

America is in thegrip of apornography pandemic thathasbecome so serious
it should be treated the same way as teenagesmoking or drink driving,
activistshavewarned.Dawn Hawkins, executivedirector of Morality in Media
said porn must betackled nodifferently than anymajorpublic health
crisis.Speaking ahead of atwo-day conference onsexualexploitation
earlier this month,she said, if left untreated,addiction topornography
can leaveusers withpsychologicaldamage.'There’s a lot ofsciencenow
proving thatpornography is harmful,' Hawkins said at the National Press
Club in Washington.Porn sites getmorevisitorsper month than Netflix,
Amazon andTwitter combined, a third of alldownloads contain porn and the
Internetnow hosts 4.2 million porn websites. Peoplewho alreadyhave a
smaller ‘striatum’ – the rewardpart of thebrain – may bemore likely to
usepornography.‘It’s not clear, for example,whether watching pornleads
tobrainchanges orwhether people born with certainbrain types watchmore
porn’she said.‘Unfortunately we cannot answer this questionbased on the
results of thepresent study’sheadded.For the study, Dr Kuhn and her
colleague Jurgen Gallinatfrom Charite University,also in Berlin,
recruited 64healthy menbetween the ages of 21 and 45 years and asked them
questions about their porn-watchinghabits.Theyalso tookimages of the
men’sbrains to measurevolume and to see how theirbrains reacted to
pornographicpictures, says the studypublished in JAMA Psychiatry journal
(must credit).They found noticeabledifferences in the menwhoabstained
compared with thosewho regularlyaccessedsexual videos orimages.Dr Kuhn
said ‘We found that thevolume of the so-calledstriatum, abrain region
thathas been associated with rewardprocessing andmotivated behaviour was
smaller themorepornography consumption theparticipants
reported.‘Moreover we found that anotherbrain region, that isalsopart of
thestriatum that isactivewhen people seesexual stimuli, shows less
activation themorepornographyparticipants consumed.’However other
researchers claimed thatpornography inmoderation wasprobably not
damaging.‘Dr Gregory Tau of the Columbia University, said: ‘Everything is
goingto be bad in excess and it’sprobably not terrible inmoderation.’Dr
Tau,who was not involved with the study, saidmore research was needed, in
particular longer studies to determinewhether pornleads tobrain
changes.He said ‘It is possible that there areindividuals with a certain
kind ofbrain that aremore susceptible to these kinds of behaviours.‘Or,
it’s possible it’sthe excessive use (of porn) that’sperpetuatingitself
to causingbrainchanges. Or, it could beboth.’Dr Kuhn said other
behaviours, such as driving ataxi arelinked tochanges inbrain size and
functioning.‘Basicallyeverything that people doveryfrequently can shape
theirbrainstructure andfunction’sheadded.