Watching pornography may shrink the brain and dull responses to sexual stimulation, researchers have suggested.
Scientists have found for the first time that regularly viewing sexual images could be physically harmful.
Researchers from the Max Planck Institute in Berlin found that a part of the brain which activates when people feel motivated or rewarded, shrinks and works less efficiently.
So people who watch a lot of porn are likely to need increasingly graphic material to achieve the same sexual stimulation.
For the study, Dr Kuhn and her colleague Jurgen Gallinat from Charite University, also in Berlin, recruited 64 healthy men between the ages of 21 and 45 years and asked them questions about their porn-watching habits.
They also took images of the men’s brains to measure volume and to see how their brains reacted to pornographic pictures.
They found noticeable differences in the men who abstained compared with those who regularly accessed sexual videos or images.
However other researchers claimed that pornography in moderation was probably not damaging.
“Everything is going to be bad in excess and it’s probably not terrible in moderation,” Dr Gregory Tau of the Columbia University
Dr Tau, who was not involved with the study, agreed that more research should be done in this area and that longer studies would be need to find out if porn leads to brain changes.
“It is possible that there are individuals with a certain kind of brain that are more susceptible to these kinds of behaviors,” he said.
The study was published in JAMA Psychiatry.
据《每日电讯报》报道，调查显示观看色情电影可能使大脑收缩，并对性刺激反应迟钝。
科学家首次发现，定期地观看性图片会对生理有损害。
柏林马普研究所的调查者发现，当人们感到激动或者受到奖赏时，脑的一部分运动会收缩并且效率低下。
所以看过很多色情音频视频的人很容易需要比原来更多的形象的感官刺激来达到同样的性刺激。
研究中，库恩博士和他来自柏林查理特大学的同事尤根，征集了64位年纪在21到45岁的健康男士，问他们关于观看色情片的问题。
他们还给这些人的大脑拍了照片，测量大脑容量，观察大脑受到色情图片刺激时的反应。
同经常定期地看色情影像的男人比，在拥有自制力的人身上，他们看到了显著的差别。
然而，有一些调查者声称有节制的观看色情影像不会对大脑产生损害。
“任何事过度的做都是有害的，有节制地做可能不算太糟，”哥伦比亚大学的格雷戈里博士说。
格雷戈里博士没有参与这项调查，他认为为了以后能够证明色情损害大脑应该做更多的调查。
“可能存在天生对这些东西敏感的大脑，”他说。
这项研究发表在《美国医学会杂志—精神病学》上。