Scans Of Sex Addicts' Brains Call Diagnosis Into Question

Wednesday, July 17, 2013 - 15:20 in Psychology & Sociology

Is Uncontrollable Porn-Watching Sex Addiction? andronicusmax via Flickr In a new study, "hypersexual" brains don't respond to sexual images the same way that drug addicts' brains respond to images of drugs. Though it's a popular excuse for celebrity infidelity, there's some debate over whether sex addiction actually exists. The latest edition of the psychiatrist's bible, the DSM, is little help on the subject, listing hypersexuality (i.e. sex addiction) as a condition that will require more research before it gets a category in the book. In the first study of its kind, a group of researchers recently tried to pin down whether neural responses to sexual imagery could be predicted based on symptoms of hypersexuality, a major step in determining whether sex can be seen as addictive in the same way heroin or nicotine are. For the experiment, 39 men and 13 women who reported having difficulty controlling how often...

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