the neuroscience of porn use i'm dr. trish leigh, cognitive neuroscientist and sex
addiction recovery coach in this video let's dig into the neuroscience and the neurological
mechanisms behind pornography use i know that you think it's just a harmless way that you relax
and decrease stress and stave off boredom i'm here to tell you there's a lot more at play
when you are chilling with porn so here is how it goes when you go into the screen what happens is
you're teaching your brain to hit the easy button for a massive dopamine deluge
a flood of dopamine into your system so every single time you go back into the screen
you teach your brain i don't have to work for dopamine all i have to do is hit this button
and i get tons of it from what i'm viewing on the screen and in later videos we'll talk about genres
and intensity and escalation but for now what i want you to know is when you go into the screen to
watch porn it is what's considered a super normal stimulus more than normal a lot more than normal a
lot more than is healthy for you so when you hit that button and you get that deluge what happens
is you are impairing functioning in your frontal lobe which will impact your ability to think
it will give you more anxiety and depression it makes it so that you can't control your impulses
at the same time you are also frying out the reward center in the middle of your brain what
that does is you are training your brain to need the heightened level of arousal that you
get from porn in the street in the screen which means you no longer will be attracted to your
partner or real life people for sexual encounters and we know that this is happening at tragic rates
for younger people that they are preferring to consume pornography than they are to put any
effort into finding a partner to actually have a beautiful sexual experience with so this is one
of the dangers of porn that people do not realize and it goes back to the neuro science mechanisms
that are happening that are flying under the radar so every time you watch porn you might not realize
that you are wiring your brain to be attracted to the screen more than it is attracted to your life
and more that it is attracted to other people now how does it show up in your life when you
go into the screen it creates a dopamine deluge a flood but what that does is creates a dopamine
deficit in your life so inadvertently you're training your brain that there's no dopamine
in the world so eventually your work won't do it for you anymore your friends your partner hanging
out connecting with people that won't do it for you anymore and your hobbies won't do it for
you anymore the only thing that will do it for you is porn and sex and that's how pornography
can roll over into a more global sex addiction which yes in fact israel
and that's the role that porn plays so there are neuroscience mechanisms that are happening every
time you think about watching porn and absolutely every time you watch porn so beware
that that is happening to you and you may not even know it okay follow me through to the next
video because in the next video we're going to talk about the neural mechanisms behind
how addiction begins to pornography and sex so i will see you there if you want help on this
journey drtrishleigh.com and control your brain or it'll control you see you in the next video