Nikki Prause on How Porn and Sex are Different in the Brain – Smart Sex, Smart Love with Dr. Joe Kort

There’s been a lot of noise in the media about porn use, with many doomsayers claiming that it triggers dangerous neurochemical changes in the brain. However, newer research says that just isn’t so. This week Joe talks with American neuroscientist, Nikki Prause, who thinks that porn and sex are totally different in the brain. Hear Nikki explain how her brain research debunks the myth that you can have an addiction to sex or porn. Brain science is hot these days, so listen to Nikki and Joe talk about how rigorous studies have not found sex addiction to be a real dependency, or reflective of any brain-related compulsion issues at all….

Dr. Joe Kort:                       Welcome to Smart Sex, Smart Love. I'm Dr. Joe Kort, and today the topic of our podcast is how porn and sex are different in the brain. On today's show, I'll be discussing that, because there's been a tremendous amount of noise about watching porn, with many doomsayers claiming that it triggers dangerous neurochemical changes in the brain. But newer research says that it isn't so, and that people who state that they have a problem watching porn, otherwise known as porn addicts, are actually people with high libidos, not people whose brains have been warped by sex addiction and porn. Anti-porn advocates argue that porn is a public health issue, and that if individuals in society only knew the damage that porn use was causing to our brains, we would regulate it. These fear-based arguments often invoke brain-related lingo, and throw around terms like "dopamine bursts," and "de-sensitization," to describe what allegedly happens in the brains of people who watch too much porn.

But my guest today, American neuroscientist Nikki [Prouse 00:01:15], thinks that this is nonsense, that porn and sex and totally different in the brain. Brain science is hot these days, and rigorous studies have not found sex addiction to be real or reflective of any unique brain-related issues at all. So today I'll be asking Nikki how the research debunks the myth that anybody can have an addiction to sex or to porn. Welcome, Nikki!

Nikki P.:                                Thanks, Joe. Excuse me. Thank you. [crosstalk 00:01:42]

Dr. Joe Kort:                       Yeah. It's really good to have you here. I refer to your work all the time, and now I'm going to be able to say in my talks, if you want to learn more, not just to Google you, but to come to my podcast and hear direct questions I'm going to ask you.

Nikki P.:                                Sweet, sweet traffic. Sounds good.

Dr. Joe Kort:                       So could you tell us, just the first part is why don't you think that sex addiction is an addiction, or porn addiction is an addiction?

Nikki P.:                                There are obviously people who have problems in these areas. You know? They look at porn more than they mean to, or they have sex at times when they didn't plan to, or it's inconsistent with their values. So of course I want to recognize it's not that we're saying there's no struggles. But the question is: How do you understand what those struggles are? That is, what kind of model best fits those behaviors, because the model that fits determines how you help.

And so if the problem is mainly, for example, having unusually strict values due to your religious upbringing, that would be important information, and would change how you might treat or help someone. So addiction is a model that is very strict. It has many very specific predictions about things that have to happen in the brain, and in behavior, to call something an addiction. And while sex and porn fit some of those, this is a necessary, but not sufficient argument. That is, it has to fit all of them, and it fails in numerous ways to fit addiction model.

Dr. Joe Kort:                       Okay. And so,