How Watching P*rn Affects The Human Brain

Watching a lot of porn can affect your brain negatively.

According to a study by some German researchers, watching pornography could have a damaging effect on the brain.

The study, published on medicaldaily says, frequent porn watching could re-wire the brain and alter its structure and functions.

It stressed that it could shrink part of the brain and reduce the ability of watchers to be sexually stimulated.

According to the study having sex and watching pornography cause dopamine, the neurotransmitter responsible for learning, reward, emotions and pleasure, to be released in the brain.

The researchers noted that the more porn a person watches, the more the dopamine that is released, which makes the brain to be desensitised to its effects, which could reduce their decision-making capabilities.

Young people who watch porn frequently were also found to have reduced likelihood or tendencies to venture into risk-taking ventures.

The leader of the researchers, Simone Kühn, noted that men who view too much porn may become lazier than others and that their research provided strong evidence that pornography might harm the brain in some ways and change its size.

According to Kuhn, their findings showed that those who watch pornography have smaller corpus striatum, a part of the basal ganglia of the brain, comprising the caudate and lentiform nuclei, and that the more pornography people watched, the lower the activity in the reward centres in their brains.

The researchers further warned that people who are used to watching porn tend to first think of porn instead of the actual sexual experience any time they have sexual desires, once their brain associates the feelings given by oxytocin, vasopressin and serotonin (often released during porn or sex) to pornography. The researchers had yet to ascertain the level of impact watching porn has on the brain.