Researchers from the University of Cambridge found that pornography activates the same brain regions in sex addicts and drug addicts.
Dr Valerie Voon , lead author of the study and a Wellcome Trust fellow, and her colleagues from the Department of Psychiatry studied the brain activity of 19 male participants diagnosed with compulsive sexual behavior. The researchers compared the data of these participants to 19 healthy individuals.
The selected participants were shown short videos with sexually explicit content and sports. The researchers observed the brain activity of each participant through magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). MRI uses an individual's blood oxygen level to measure and record the signals sent to and from the brain.
"In many ways, they show similarities in their behavior to patients with drug addictions. We wanted to see if these similarities were reflected in brain activity, too," explained Dr Voon in a press release.
The study discovered that there were three regions which became more active in the brains of those with compulsive sexual behavior than the brains of the healthy individuals. These regions were the amydala, ventral striatum, and the dorsal anterior cingulate. The same regions were also the regions activated when drug addicts were exposed to a drug stimulus.
The ventral striatum is the region related to reward-based decision-making while the dorsal anterior cingulate is responsible in regulating cognitive control. The amygdala, on the other hand, is a small part of the brain linked to emotions and aggression.
Dr Voon and her team also found a link between the brain activity and the age of the participants. The younger participants showed higher activity on their ventral striatum when shown with porn videos. But, the researchers clarified that the results of their study do not imply that pornography itself is addictive. Further study is needed to establish a direct link between compulsive sexual behavior and drug addiction.
Further details of the study were published in the July 12 issue of PLOS One.
