Online pornography offers an almost inexhaustible source of images that appear day after day. According to the latest study carried out by the University of Cambridge (United Kingdom), this circumstance makes people who suffer from sex addiction more susceptible to Internet “signals” linked to sexual images than to images with a neutral theme. .
The difficulty of controlling sexual thoughts and also their sexual behaviors is part of a pathology that affects 1 in 25 young adults . This condition, which can affect the family environment and social life of the individual, has been found to be associated with hyperactivity in three specific areas of the brain : the nucleus accumbens, the anterior cingulate dorsal and the amygdala, all associated with the stimuli produced by the drugs
In the new study, led by scientist Valerie Voon, experts studied the behavior of 22 sex addicts and 40 healthy men , without addictions. In the first experiment, both groups had to observe a series of paired images that included both naked women and furniture or clothed women. They were then asked to choose an image to earn 1 pound from each pair of photos (chances of winning were 50%). Sex addicts were more likely to choose the sexual image over any other , while the control group chose the photos of clothed women over those of neutral objects.
“We can all go some way to the search for new stimuli online, which could arise flitting from one news website to another, or jumping from Facebook to Amazon, YouTube or others. For people who display compulsive sexual behavior, however, this becomes a pattern of behavior beyond their control, which focuses solely on pornographic images and breaking the link between these signals and the behavior can be extremely difficult ” , explains Voon, the study leader.
Another part of the study was based on a new trial in which 20 sex addicts and 20 healthy volunteers were paired up and subjected to brain scans while looking at various repeated images : a naked woman, a coin and a gray box. The brain scan revealed that when sex addicts saw the same sexual image multiple times, they experienced a greater decrease in activity in the region of the brain known as the cingulate cortex, as the addict finds the same stimulus less and less rewarding: the habituation effect . The same happened with pornographic videos.
“ Our findings are particularly relevant in the context of online pornography . It’s unclear what triggers sex addiction in the first place and some people are likely more predisposed to addiction than others, but the seemingly endless supply of new sexual images available online helps fuel their addiction, so it is increasingly difficult to escape, ”Voon says.
