Getting help for issues related to excessive porn use is a fine idea. However, many therapists have no conception of how addictive today’s hyperstimulating Internet porn is. Many were trained when static, softcore Playboy was porn, and before the recent brain science that is helping to explain the close parallels between extremely stimulating substances and […]
COMMENTS: Basic premise is that addictions hijacks the pair bonding mechanisms shared by the reward circuitry. Porn addiction therefore likely affects the pair-bonding mechanisms in our brains.
Amphetamine Reward In The Monogamous Prairie Vole
Neurosci Lett. 2007 May 17; 418(2): 190–194.
Published online 2007 March 14. doi: 10.1016/j.neulet.2007.03.019.
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Read More… from Amphetamine Reward In The Monogamous Prairie Vole (2007)
COMMENT: Stress can increase vulnerability to addiction. 
Chronic Stress, Drug Use, and Vulnerability to Addiction
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Read More… from Chronic Stress, Drug Use, and Vulnerability to Addiction (2008)
Morality lies not where we think it does This post is about morality, but not about a particular moral agenda. It’s about how your inner compass works. Whatever your moral code, if you or your loved ones occasionally do things that violate it, read on. Moral decisions (including sexual ones) do not invoke a specific […]
Read More… from Sex and Morality: A Debate Between Competing Neurons (2011, updated research list)
Comments: Study states the obvious – computer game addiction exists (about 12% of users). 
Excessive computer game playing evidence for addiction and aggression?
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Read More… from Excessive computer game playing evidence for addiction and aggression? (2007)
Comments: It’s technical but better written than most research articles. Tells the story of addiction as over-learning, which replaces our natural pleasures and desires. Learning and memory are the basis of neuroplasticity: changes in strength of nerve circuits.
Steven E. Hyman, M.D. Am J Psychiatry 162:1414-1422, August 2005
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Read More… from Addiction: A Disease of Learning and Memory (2005)
Comments: Prairie voles can form pair bonds (social monogamy) as can humans. Only 3% of mammals can pair bond, which occurs in the reward circuitry of the brain. In this study it was found that the ability to pair bond makes animals more vulnerable to addiction. Addictions hijack the bonding mechanism, which runs on dopamine.
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YBOP COMMENTS: Important findings in this study are that neither time spent viewing porn on the Internet nor personality factors were associated the level of reported problems with Internet porn use (IAT sex score). Instead, it was intensity of the experience and amount of novelty (different applications opened) that mattered…suggesting that dopamine levels were at […]
YBOP Comments: The concept of behavioral addictions is controversial to some therapists and sexologists. However, it is becoming clear to researchers that behavioral addictions cause brain changes that mirror drug addictions. This has to be, as all a drug can do is amplify or inhibit a normal physiological mechanism. Addiction mechanisms are already in the […]
Read More… from Introduction to Behavioral Addictions (2010)
