Research published last week in the journal JAMA Psychiatry found less grey matter in the brains of subjects who watched tons and tons of pornography. EXPLAINS INTERNET TROLLS AMIRITE.
The men filled out surveys, describing how much porn they watched.
Their responses averaged a little more than four hours per week. Their brains were scanned with MRI technology while they were shown sexually explicit images from porn websites, along with non-sexual images of people exercising.
“Our findings indicated that gray matter volume of the right caudate of the striatum is smaller with higher pornography use,” said the study.
Furthermore, when sexually explicit material was shown, the men’s MRIs showed diminished function in a part of the brain that processes motivation.
I feel like there are some teenage boys home sick from school who might quibble with that “pornography makes you lazy” correlation. (That is a masturbation joke.)
So pornography shrinks your brain, decreases your motivation, grows hair on your palms, AND lets the devil in through your pee-hole? What can’t it do!?
While it’s unclear whether porno consumption actually makes a person’s brain shrivel away and die (“PROLLY THO” – the baby Jesus) or if “Individuals with lower striatum volume may need more external stimulation to experience pleasure and might therefore experience pornography consumption as more rewarding,” one thing is perfectly clear: Pretty much every brain in human history has squandered some of its brain matter. Because porno is as old as crotches, and as popular.
Image via LM Photography/Shutterstock.
