“I could not believe the intensity of the rush I got when I clicked to the site! Very powerful excitation – tingling, dry mouth, and even trembling.”
This is how one person describes their experience of compulsive pornography use.
One of the main components of addiction is the experience of craving. Craving is an abnormally high desire to pursue a behavior or substance. Addiction, at a very basic level, is the brain “learning” that something is extremely rewarding, whether it is healthy or not. Craving is your brain’s way of urging you to go get “it,” … again and again. When an addict does something, or sees something, associated with their addiction, they become extremely excited.
A 2015 study investigated how craving would appear in the brains of those who have difficulty controlling their sexual behavior (i.e., problematic hypersexual behavior). Also, they wanted to find out what specific brain changes differentiate this group from men without problematic hypersexual behavior (PHB).
The researchers scanned the brains of 23 men with PHB and 22 non-PHB healthy controls while they viewed pornographic images. They compared how they responded to both sexual and neutral images. In line with the researchers’ predictions, the study found:
- Men with PHB experienced significantly higher desire than the controls when exposed to sexual images. The researchers concluded that, “desire for pornography might play a key role in cybersex addiction.”
- Clear differences showed up in the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain where we weigh the importance of something and then decide whether or not to pursue it. This looked like addiction:
“These results suggested that the functional changes in the neural circuitry that mediates cue-induced desire for sexual behavior were similar to those in response to cue presentation in individuals with substance addiction or behavioral addiction.”
Put simply, an addict’s brain is tricked into thinking that whatever they’re addicted to is so important, that they may neglect what actually is important.
In this study, men with PHB also showed a decreased response to the non-pornographic images compared to the controls. This means that while men with PHB craved pornography more, they also liked non-sexual rewards less.
Some people have heard that in order for something to be addictive, it has to have a toxic effect on the body, like a drug. That’s not true. In reality, addiction is about whether specific pathological changes have occurred in the brain. Both addictive substances and addictive behaviors can produce these changes.
As the authors explain:
“Like brain imaging studies on substance and behavior addiction, [problematic hypersexual behavior] was related to functional changes in the [brain’s] PFC and subcortical areas, even without the neurotoxicity of drugs.”
This study supports the existence of pornography addiction. It found evidence of two brain changes all addictions share: sensitization (greater cue-reactivity), and hypofrontality (weaker executive control).
Although pornography may not literally be poison, this study suggests that it may be associated with brain changes that lead to out of control behavior, and that’s toxic.
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For a more detailed discussion of the study highlighted in this article, see NCOSE’s Research Spotlight, Neural Substrates of Sexual Desire in Individuals with Problematic Hypersexual Behavior.
