sexual tastes vary from person to person but with the current pornography epidemic as some call it one has to wonder how exactly this may affect our desires and perception of sexuality moreover how does it affect our sex lives pornography constitutes about 25% of all search engine requests and is the fourth most common reason people give for going on the internet and while it may seem to Simply facilitate an instinctual sexual response linked to millions of years of evolution the truth is pornography has dynamically changed over time ultimately molding our tastes and desires the not so
shocking truth is that pornography has profound consequences for the brain and acts in many ways like a drug with prolonged exposure your tolerance is increased and many often find themselves addicted though it's not a physical substance it leads to the same general loss of control the compulsiveness to seek out the activity despite negative consequences and withdraw when it goes away much like that of gambling or running for example the issue is that continued exposure can cause long-term or even lifelong neuroplastic change in the the brain dopamine is released as a reward whenever we accomplish something
whether it be eating to sustain life or sexual activity to produce future life and this dopamine consolidates neural Connections in order to drive us to perform the same activity in the future in other words it alters and forms the brain cells to motivate certain actions it rewires your brain the National Institutes of Health measure drug addictiveness by testing Rats the rat is trained to press a button in order to get a drug and the harder it works indicates how addictive the substance is it turns out that the more addictive a drug is the more dopamine
we see released and while there is unfortunately no rat porn that we can give to them we do know that dopamine is also released during sexual excitement which pornography plays right into the more time you spend doing it the more dopamine gets released which reinforces the behavior and makes you not only desire it in the future but require it and as you begin to imagine these images away from the computer or while having sex they become reinforced furthermore each orgasm releases even more dopamine which consolidates the connections made during the session it's a feedback loop
that becomes harder to escape and just like a drug your tolerance for visual stimulation has now compounded making it more difficult to be turned on by reality pornography addiction can often lead to finding your mate less attractive the good news is it doesn't have to be permanent usually when people understand the mechanism and realize it's affecting their relationships they can stop the brain is often described as a use it or lose it system because the neural connections you stimulate grow stronger and desire to be activated while the ones you ignore become weakened much like your
muscles which if sitting still all day itch for activity but after prolonged non-use they become complacent luckily because of this use it or lose it brain the same neuroplastic system that proliferates these habits can also be used to acquire healthier ones got a burning question you want answered ask it in the comments or on Facebook and Twitter and subscribe for more weekly science [Music] videos
