A team of researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin (Germany) has carried out a study to find out the impact on the brain of continuous stimulation of the pleasure center through excess of explicit sexual content . The work has been published in the journal JAMA Psychiatry .
For the experiment, the scientists recruited 64 healthy men between the ages of 21 and 45 who were asked to answer a questionnaire about the time they spent watching sex videos, the result of which averaged four hours a week . In addition, they performed a series of computed tomography (MRI) of the brain to measure its volume and observe its reaction to the sexual images that were presented during the study.
The results of the experiment revealed that the more sexual content the participants saw, the more the striatum of the brain diminished , that is, a small nerve structure just below the cerebral cortex. Similarly, the more explicit sexual content they observed, the more the connections between the striatum and the prefrontal cortex, the area of the brain responsible for behavior and decision-making, deteriorated.
Therefore, the researchers conclude that the more sexual content is observed, the more gray matter is reduced in certain parts of the brain, as well as a reduction in its brain activity .
“We found an important negative link between the act of viewing pornography several hours a week and the volume of gray matter in the right lobe of the brain, as well as the activity of the prefrontal cortex,” say the study authors.
