Talk is directed to parents and children. It focuses on research that shows changes in the brain’s frontal cortex in sex addicts and the implications of those changes for impulse control in porn addicts.
Here’s a link to and Can Pornography Use Become An Actual Brain Addiction?, an article for lay people article by neurosurgeon Donald Hilton
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Read More… from Talk by Neurosurgeon on Porn’s Impact on the Brain
Can dopamine receptors reveal clues about binging? Romeo Guinea Pig Causes Baby Boom A guinea pig called Sooty enjoyed a night of passion with twenty-four females after fooling his way into their cage in south Wales. Sooty wooed the lady guinea pigs, one by one, and has now become the proud father of forty-two baby […]
Read More… from Has Evolution Trained Our Brains to Gorge on Food and Sex? (2010)
“It’s amazing what you learn doing this. I think I now fully understand the saying that ‘knowledge is power.’ Once you know how something works and how it affects you, it’s much easier to muster the willpower to make a change if you so wish.”—recovering porn user
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Read More… from Tools For Change: Recovery from Porn Addiction
How Understanding Drug Addiction Can Motivate You to Exercise
Much has been made of the “runner’s high,” the euphoria attributed to pleasure-inducing neurotransmitter dopamine and endorphins (the brain’s endogenous opiates) being released in the brain during exercise. But the question is, if exercise causes the same brain changes as do other rewarding activities like, say, taking drugs, why, then, don’t exercisers crave their workouts the way addicts crave drugs?
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Read More… from How Understanding Drug Addiction Can Motivate You to Exercise
Two types of brain changes may occur when you use Internet porn: psychological and addiction related. Both involve neuroplastic alterations in the structure of nerve cells and their connections. No clear line separates psychological from addictive changes. Is it conditioning, or a “numbed pleasure response”, that has someone craving a particular fetish or genre of porn? Or is it both?
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Read More… from I’m not an addict. What happens if I “reboot?”
Comments: study reveals that overeating “cafeteria food” to obesity leads to decreases in dopamine levels and blunted dopamine response to normal rats chow. However, the rats still had reward response to the cafeteria food. One of many studies showing brain changes similar to those addicted to drugs. Over consumption of supernormal versions of natural rewards can lead to addiction.
Neuroscience. 2009 April 10; 159(4): 1193–1199.
Published online 2009 February 11. doi:10.1016/j.neuroscience.2009.02.007.
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Read More… from Deficits of mesolimbic dopamine neurotransmission in rat dietary obesity (2009)
COMMENTS: One of several new studies indicating brain changes mimicking those found in drug addicts. Study does not say what type of internet addiction it measured. Was it all encompassing Internet addiction, including porn, or was it only Internet video games?
J Psychiatr Res. 2011 Jul 16.
Dong G, Huang J, Du X.
Source
Department of Psychology, Zhejiang Normal University, Jinhua City, Zhejiang Province, PR China.
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COMMENT: Adolescents with internet addiction have decreased gray matter in portions of the frontal cortex. Decreases in size and functioning the frontal cortex are found in all addiction processes. I wonder about the extent of porn use in the Internet addiction group. Another example of a non-drug addiction causing brain changes similar to substance abuse disorders.
Eur J Radiol. 2009 Nov 17.
Zhou Y, Lin FC, Du YS, Qin LD, Zhao ZM, Xu JR, Lei H.
Source
Department of Radiology, RenJi Hospital, Jiao Tong University Medical School, Shanghai 200127, PR China.
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COMMENT: Adolescents with internet addiction have decreased gray matter in portions of the frontal cortex. Decreases in size and functioning the frontal cortex are found in all addiction processes. I wonder about the extent of porn use in the Internet addiction group. Another example of a non-drug addiction causing brain changes similar to substance abuse disorders.
Eur J Radiol. 2009 Nov 17.
Zhou Y, Lin FC, Du YS, Qin LD, Zhao ZM, Xu JR, Lei H.
Source
Department of Radiology, RenJi Hospital, Jiao Tong University Medical School, Shanghai 200127, PR China.
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COMMENTS: By Volkow, who is the head of NIDA. Real simple – food addiction parallels drug addiction in addiction mechanisms and brain changes. More proof that food addiction can alter the brain in the same way that drugs can. Our question – if food can cause addiction, how can masturbating to porn not be potentially addictive? Especially considering the fact that porn use is far more stimulating and longer in duration than eating.
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