when the Max Planck team (above) looked at non -addicted porn users' brains they found less activation of another region of the reward circuit. This is evidence of desensitisation, or a numbed responsiveness.
In analysing the Max Planck results, the Cambridge team hypothesised that the brain responses to
porn might differ between non-addicts and addicts. True. Yet might the visual stimuli used in the two studies go far in explaining the differences? The Max Planck researchers employed half-second exposure to still porn images, which may strike today's porn viewer as ordinary, while the 9-second video clips the Cambridge team used would arouse most porn viewers, addicted or not. In short, perhaps the video clips were proper cues for today's users of streaming HD hardcore porn while brief stills were a closer representation of everyday erotic visuals.
In any case, both hyper-reactivity to addiction cues (hardcore video) and reduced sexual responsiveness to tamer sexual visuals are not surprising in porn overconsumers. Both cue-reactivity and a reduced pleasure response are often seen in addicts of all kinds.
Readers interested in addiction science and its relevance to internet porn users may want to have a look at this peer-reviewed journal article: "Pornography addiction – a supranormal stimulus considered in the context of neuroplasticity" .[97]
No doubt more brain studies on porn addicts are on the way, but already addiction specialists maintain that all addiction is one condition. It doesn't matter whether it entails sexual behaviour, gambling, alcohol, nicotine, heroin or crystal meth – many of which addiction neuroscientists have studied for decades. Hundreds of brain studies on behavioural and substance addiction confirm that all addictions modify the same fundamental brain mechanisms [98] and produce a recognized set of anatomical and chemical alterations. [99] (More on these in a moment.)
In 2011 the American Society of Addiction Medicine (doctors and researchers) confirmed the addiction-is-one-condition model by publishing an all-encompassing new definition of addiction.
[100] This is from the related FAQs:
QUESTION: This new definition of addiction refers to addiction involving gambling,
food, and sexual behaviours. Does ASAM really believe that food and sex are addicting?
ANSWER: The new ASAM definition makes a departure from equating addiction with just
substance dependence, by describing how addiction is also related to behaviours that are rewarding. ... This definition says that addiction is about functioning and brain circuitry and how the structure and function of the brains of persons with addiction differ from the structure and function of the brains of persons who do not have addiction . ... Food and sexual behaviours and gambling behaviours can be associated with the ‘pathological pursuit of rewards’ described in this new definition of addiction.
Even the psychiatry profession's heavily criticised and obsolete bible, the DSM-5, has grudgingly begun to recognize the existence of behavioural addictions. [101] Charles O’Brien, MD, chair of the DSM-5 Work Group on Substance-Related and Addictive Disorders said: [102]
The idea of a non-substance-related addiction may be new to some people, but those of us
who are studying the mechanisms of addiction find strong evidence from animal and human
research that addiction is a disorder of the brain reward system, and it doesn’t matter whether the system is repeatedly activated by gambling or alcohol or another substance.
Outside the addiction field, you can still find vocal addiction naysayers who insist that gambling addiction and porn addiction are not addictions but rather compulsions. This is a red herring. I have asked these naysayers, ‘how do the neural correlates for a compulsion to use something differ from the neural correlates for an addiction to something?’ ( Neural correlates refer to the brain
In analysing the Max Planck results, the Cambridge team hypothesised that the brain responses to
porn might differ between non-addicts and addicts. True. Yet might the visual stimuli used in the two studies go far in explaining the differences? The Max Planck researchers employed half-second exposure to still porn images, which may strike today's porn viewer as ordinary, while the 9-second video clips the Cambridge team used would arouse most porn viewers, addicted or not. In short, perhaps the video clips were proper cues for today's users of streaming HD hardcore porn while brief stills were a closer representation of everyday erotic visuals.
In any case, both hyper-reactivity to addiction cues (hardcore video) and reduced sexual responsiveness to tamer sexual visuals are not surprising in porn overconsumers. Both cue-reactivity and a reduced pleasure response are often seen in addicts of all kinds.
Readers interested in addiction science and its relevance to internet porn users may want to have a look at this peer-reviewed journal article: "Pornography addiction – a supranormal stimulus considered in the context of neuroplasticity" .[97]
No doubt more brain studies on porn addicts are on the way, but already addiction specialists maintain that all addiction is one condition. It doesn't matter whether it entails sexual behaviour, gambling, alcohol, nicotine, heroin or crystal meth – many of which addiction neuroscientists have studied for decades. Hundreds of brain studies on behavioural and substance addiction confirm that all addictions modify the same fundamental brain mechanisms [98] and produce a recognized set of anatomical and chemical alterations. [99] (More on these in a moment.)
In 2011 the American Society of Addiction Medicine (doctors and researchers) confirmed the addiction-is-one-condition model by publishing an all-encompassing new definition of addiction.
[100] This is from the related FAQs:
QUESTION: This new definition of addiction refers to addiction involving gambling,
food, and sexual behaviours. Does ASAM really believe that food and sex are addicting?
ANSWER: The new ASAM definition makes a departure from equating addiction with just
substance dependence, by describing how addiction is also related to behaviours that are rewarding. ... This definition says that addiction is about functioning and brain circuitry and how the structure and function of the brains of persons with addiction differ from the structure and function of the brains of persons who do not have addiction . ... Food and sexual behaviours and gambling behaviours can be associated with the ‘pathological pursuit of rewards’ described in this new definition of addiction.
Even the psychiatry profession's heavily criticised and obsolete bible, the DSM-5, has grudgingly begun to recognize the existence of behavioural addictions. [101] Charles O’Brien, MD, chair of the DSM-5 Work Group on Substance-Related and Addictive Disorders said: [102]
The idea of a non-substance-related addiction may be new to some people, but those of us
who are studying the mechanisms of addiction find strong evidence from animal and human
research that addiction is a disorder of the brain reward system, and it doesn’t matter whether the system is repeatedly activated by gambling or alcohol or another substance.
Outside the addiction field, you can still find vocal addiction naysayers who insist that gambling addiction and porn addiction are not addictions but rather compulsions. This is a red herring. I have asked these naysayers, ‘how do the neural correlates for a compulsion to use something differ from the neural correlates for an addiction to something?’ ( Neural correlates refer to the brain
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