Brain on Porn (Social #1), DeYtH Banger [red queen ebook .TXT] 📗

is in and of itself harmful and addictive,” Ian Kerner, a licensed psychotherapist and sex counselor, told Fox News. “That has not been, in my estimation, scientifically or clinically proven.”

Rather, Kerner argued, excessive porn viewing often presents as a comorbidity with another health issue, like anxiety, depression or bipolar disorder.

“When people get depressed, they may get lonely and tend to masturbate,” he said. “If they’re having anxiety, the problem occurs when the only way you know how to calm yourself is with masturbation … in those cases, porn is the symptom, not the problem.”

In fact, in Kerner’s experience, ethical, so-called feminist pornography — which often features storylines, and always contracted, paid adults having consensual sex — can enhance couples’ sexual experiences by helping partners get warmed up and be creative in the bedroom.

Perhaps counterintuitively, watching porn may also help keep some relationships intact, he said.

“I know a lot of men who travel and are happy to masturbate to porn rather than potentially pursue infidelity,” Kerner said. “When there are natural libido gaps in a relationship — maybe one partner is interested in sex more than the other partner, maybe one just had a baby and can’t have sex, or maybe illness is involved — porn is actually a really positive way to smooth over those libido gaps.”

As for adolescents consuming porn, the Virginia legislators argue that the average age of exposure to porn is 11 to 12 — a stat that certainly would scare any responsible parent, yet one which Kerner argued, if true, suggests a deeper issue for discussion.

“If kids are learning about sex through porn, well, that’s not a problem with porn — that’s a problem with a lack of proper sex education,” he argued. “If we live in a country that teaches abstinence only, the problem is there’s no competing script to porn.”

What don’t we know about porn?

And yet, experts like Struthers argue that basic psychological science suggests frequent exposure to something like porn may indeed lead to normalization of harmful behaviors.

“The more you’re exposed to something, the more you tend to see it as acceptable, whether it’s violence, gambling or sexuality,” Struthers said.

His concern, however, is the psychological effect that frequent exposure may have on developing brains.

“I think the questions we really need to be asking are, ‘What are the secondary effects that porn has, not in what they do for a person’s sexual behavior, but does viewing porn influence our ability to detect nonverbal nonconsensual sexual cues, or instrument objectivity?’”

Wright, the professor at Indiana University, who has conducted research on porn’s potential influence on youths’ behavior, speculated that most scientists in this area and at this level of debate would agree with some of the lawmakers’ claims yet disagree with others.

But he said one thing most would agree on is that more can be done.

“Is there enough suggestive evidence of harm in terms of compulsive use and socialization toward attitudes and behaviors that most people perceive as antisocial that scientists should support policy efforts calling for further research, community and school education programs, and programs aimed at the prevention of harmful effects?” Wright said in an email. “I think the majority of scientists familiar with the research in this area would say, ‘Yes.’”

 

 

 

 

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How Porn Changes The Brain



Rewire itself. It triggers the brain to pump out chemicals and form new nerve pathways, leading to profound and lasting changes in the brain.

Believe it or not, studies show that those who consume pornography more frequently have brains that are less connected, less active, and even smaller in some areas. [1]

To be fair, the studies only show that there’s a correlation between porn consumption and smaller, less active brains, but they raise the question: Can porn literally change your brain?

Scientists used to believe that once you finished childhood, your brain lost the ability to grow. [2] They thought that nothing except illness or injury could physically alter an adult brain. Now we know that the brain goes on changing throughout life, [3] constantly rewiring itself and laying down new nerve connections, and that this is particularly true in our youth. [4]

See, the brain is made up of about 100 billion special nerves called neurons, [5] that carry electrical signals back and forth between parts of the brain and out to the rest of the body. Imagine you’re learning to play an E chord on the guitar: your brain sends a signal to your hand telling it what to do. As that signal zips along from neuron to neuron, those activated nerve cells start to form connections because “neurons that fire together, wire together.” Those newly-connected neurons form what’s called a “neuronal pathway.” [6]

Think of a neuronal pathway like a trail in the woods. Every time someone uses the trail, it gets a little wider and more permanent. Similarly, every time a message travels down a neuronal pathway, the pathway gets stronger. [7] With enough repetitions, your neuronal pathway will get so strong you’ll be strumming that E chord without even thinking about it. That process of building better, faster neuronal pathways is how we learn any new skill, whether it’s memorizing math formulas or driving a car. Practice makes perfect.

But there’s a catch. Your brain is a very hungry organ. It may only weigh 2% of your body weight, but it eats up 20% of your energy and oxygen, [8] so resources are scarce up there in your head. There’s some pretty fierce competition between brain pathways, and those that don’t get used enough will likely be replaced. [9] Use it or lose it, as they say. Only the strong survive.

That’s where porn comes in.

Porn happens to be fantastic at forming new, long-lasting pathways in the brain. In fact, porn is such a ferocious competitor that hardly any other activity can compete with it, including actual sex with a real partner. [10] That’s right, porn can actually overpower the brain’s natural ability to have real sex! Why? As Dr. Norman Doidge, a researcher at Columbia University, explains, porn creates the perfect conditions and triggers the release of the right chemicals to make lasting changes in the brain. [11]

Conditions

The ideal conditions for forming strong neuronal pathways are when you’re in what scientists call “flow.” Flow is “a deeply satisfying state of focused attention.” [12] When you’re in flow, you get so deep into what you’re doing that nothing else seems to matter. [13] You’ve probably experienced it before, playing a game or having a conversation with friends or reading a great book. You were so focused on what you were doing that you lost track of time, and everything around you disappeared. You wanted it to keep going forever. That’s flow.

When you’re in flow, it’s like you have superhuman abilities. Athletes call it being “in the zone,” when you seem to do everything right. Your focus is intense. Your memory is phenomenal. Years later, you’ll still recall exact words of the conversation or details of what you read.

Now imagine someone sitting in front of the computer at 3:00 in the morning, looking at porn. That person is so absorbed in his or her porn trance that nothing else can compete for the consumer’s attention, not even sleep. This person is in the ideal condition for forming neuronal pathways, and that’s what they are doing. Clicking from page to page in search of the perfect image, not realizing that every image seen is reinforcing the pathways the consumer is forging in his or her brain. By now, those images are burned so deeply into their mind that they will remember them for a long time to come, maybe the entirety of their life.

Chemicals

Like other addictive substances and behaviors, porn activates the part of the brain called the reward center, [14] triggering the release of a cocktail of chemicals that give you a temporary buzz. [15] (See How Porn Affects The Brain Like a Drug.) One of the chemicals in that cocktail is a protein called DeltaFosB. [16]

Remember when we said that building neuronal pathways is like making a trail in the woods? Well, DeltaFosB is like a troop of mountaineers out there with picks and shovels, working like beavers to groom the trail. With DeltaFosB floating around, the brain is primed to make strong mental connections between the porn being consumed by individuals and the pleasure they feel while consuming. [17] Basically, the DeltaFosB is saying, “This feels good. Let’s be sure to remember it so we can do it again.”

DeltaFosB is important for learning any kind of new skills, but it can also lead to addictive/compulsive behaviors, [18] especially in adolescents. [19] DeltaFosB is referred to as “the molecular switch for addiction,” [20] because if it builds up enough in the brain, it switches on genes that create long-term cravings, driving the user back for more. [21] And once it has been released, DeltaFosB sticks around in the brain for weeks or months, which is why porn consumers may feel strong cravings for porn long after they’ve stopped the habit. [22]

The good news is, neuroplasticity works both ways. If porn pathways aren’t reinforced, they’ll eventually disappear, so the same brain mechanisms that lay down pathways for porn can replace them with something else. [23] If the time has come for you or someone you love to begin that healing process, learn more about how to get help.

 

 

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Many porn consumers find themselves getting aroused by things that used to disgust them or things that they might have previously considered to be inappropriate or unethical. As individuals consume more extreme and dangerous sex acts, they gradually begin to feel that those behaviors are more common and acceptable than they really are.

As you’d probably guess, rats don’t like the smell of death.

But a researcher named Jim Faust wondered whether that instinct could be changed, so he sprayed female rats with a liquid that smelled like a dead, rotting rat. When he put them in cages with virgin male rats, a strange thing happened. The drive to mate was so powerful that it overcame the instinct to avoid the smell, and the rats hit it off. Actually, that’s not so strange. The strange part was what happened next.

Once the male rats had learned to associate sex with the smell of death, Faust put them in cages with different objects to play with. The male rats actually preferred to play with the object that smelled like death, as if it were soaked in something they loved! [1]

We know what you’re thinking: “Now I know what I should have done for my science fair project!” No, seriously, that’s pretty gross, right? You’re probably wondering how rats could possibly be trained to go against such a powerful natural instinct. Well, here’s how:

Rats, humans, and all mammals have something in their brain called a “reward center.” [2] Part of the reward center’s job is to promote healthy living by rewarding you when you do something that either keeps you alive (e.g., eating) or creates a new life (e.g., sex), or enriches your life (e.g. building satisfying relationships). [3] The way it rewards you is by pumping a cocktail of “pleasure chemicals” through your brain. [4] (See How Porn Changes The Brain.)

Those chemicals do more than make you feel great. While you’re enjoying that good feeling, your brain is also building new nerve pathways to connect the pleasure you’re feeling to the activity you’re doing. [5] It’s the brain’s way of making sure that whatever you’re doing, you’ll come back to it again. The association between the activity and the “reward” happens automatically, even if you don’t intend it, because “neurons that fire together, wire together.” [6] (See How Porn Affects The Brain Like A Drug.)

The reward center is usually a pretty great thing, even if it didn’t work out so well for those poor rats. Normally our brain attracts us to healthy behaviors and encourages us to form life-supporting habits. [7] But when those reward chemicals get connected to something harmful, it has the opposite effect.

The same process that rewired those rats’ preferences—connecting