"Researchers Find Association Between Porn Viewing And Less Grey Matter In The
Brain" via IFLscience
I thought I'd continue on the man-funny line here ;)
So, TL;DR porn makes you dumb.
Excellent.
Don't worry, it hasn't escaped my notice that the article was written by a woman. Nor does it escape my notice that I too am a woman amused by this.
Porn is...
Brain" via IFLscience
I thought I'd continue on the man-funny line here ;)
So, TL;DR porn makes you dumb.
Excellent.
Don't worry, it hasn't escaped my notice that the article was written by a woman. Nor does it escape my notice that I too am a woman amused by this.
Porn is...
...one of those weird things. I've always had a fairly feminist view on it
personally and it doesn't escape my notice that a lot of people, both men and
women don't agree with me.
Just because I find the notion of having to watch someone else have sex to make you feel sexy REALLY
offputting doesn't mean that everyone agrees. I think we can at least all agree
to disagree.
But this is pure gold.
So, 64 men between 21 and 45 were asked to report how much porn they watched a week. Generally this did not exceed 4 hours per week per man.
They weer then MRI'ed to see what their brains were doing - and when this was done a negative
correlation between grey matter and porn was found.
If I briefly explain the difference between tissues in the brain, we have grey matter which (is a 1.3 ratio grey to
white at age 20) is repsonsible for most of the stuff we do - eating, breathing,
moving, remembering, sensory perception, emotion. To put this in perspective -
22% of our BMR (the calories required to keep us alive at the very basic level)
goes to the brain. 95% of this goes to the grey matter. It's pretty important.
The second tissue I'm going to talk about is white matter - this is what
connects grey matter together. It's basically like the LAN cables between two
computers (old school I know). Lose the links - lose the connections, and you
often see this in dementia type illnesses of the brain.
So, grey matter is pretty important and is involved in loads of things. Importantly, one of those things
is emotion and motivation.
The article mentions
that these men showed less connnection of their areas responsible for motivation
- now maybe the mystery of teenage boys suddenly being interested in doing much
is being cracked open a little ;)
To take it a step further - earlier I joked porn made you dumb, well, we could take that
line, but the one I'm interested in is the age old assumption that men who watch
porn have less respect for women. This is often refuted by people who watch it,
but could it actually be the case? This is just contention, but with the given
study, surely there is some evidence suggesting it could be true given that
areas that control motivation are affected, why would there not be an effect on
emotions.
Or is it that they have lessened
mobility, memory or sensory perception? The article doesn't go into much detail
to ponder, but it does open a lot of interesting points for discusssion - what
impact does porn have on people? Is it negative?
Obviously we have the issue with causality -
we need participants who are completely naive to porn. Wonder how well that
study would recruit....quickly I'd imagine xD
Of course this study is preliminary and we can't read too much into it but
nevertheless, I think it's an interesting find. I can't wait to find out more
when this is taken further!
So what do you guys think?
personally and it doesn't escape my notice that a lot of people, both men and
women don't agree with me.
Just because I find the notion of having to watch someone else have sex to make you feel sexy REALLY
offputting doesn't mean that everyone agrees. I think we can at least all agree
to disagree.
But this is pure gold.
So, 64 men between 21 and 45 were asked to report how much porn they watched a week. Generally this did not exceed 4 hours per week per man.
They weer then MRI'ed to see what their brains were doing - and when this was done a negative
correlation between grey matter and porn was found.
If I briefly explain the difference between tissues in the brain, we have grey matter which (is a 1.3 ratio grey to
white at age 20) is repsonsible for most of the stuff we do - eating, breathing,
moving, remembering, sensory perception, emotion. To put this in perspective -
22% of our BMR (the calories required to keep us alive at the very basic level)
goes to the brain. 95% of this goes to the grey matter. It's pretty important.
The second tissue I'm going to talk about is white matter - this is what
connects grey matter together. It's basically like the LAN cables between two
computers (old school I know). Lose the links - lose the connections, and you
often see this in dementia type illnesses of the brain.
So, grey matter is pretty important and is involved in loads of things. Importantly, one of those things
is emotion and motivation.
The article mentions
that these men showed less connnection of their areas responsible for motivation
- now maybe the mystery of teenage boys suddenly being interested in doing much
is being cracked open a little ;)
To take it a step further - earlier I joked porn made you dumb, well, we could take that
line, but the one I'm interested in is the age old assumption that men who watch
porn have less respect for women. This is often refuted by people who watch it,
but could it actually be the case? This is just contention, but with the given
study, surely there is some evidence suggesting it could be true given that
areas that control motivation are affected, why would there not be an effect on
emotions.
Or is it that they have lessened
mobility, memory or sensory perception? The article doesn't go into much detail
to ponder, but it does open a lot of interesting points for discusssion - what
impact does porn have on people? Is it negative?
Obviously we have the issue with causality -
we need participants who are completely naive to porn. Wonder how well that
study would recruit....quickly I'd imagine xD
Of course this study is preliminary and we can't read too much into it but
nevertheless, I think it's an interesting find. I can't wait to find out more
when this is taken further!
So what do you guys think?
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