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  • The sex addiction debate rages on. And that's not the only thing that's raging on, ya feel

  • me? No you don't.

  • Hi folks, Laci Green here and you're watching Dnews.

  • At the very beginning of Dnews, back when we were just a fetus, I did a video on sex

  • addiction and whether or not it's a real disorder.

  • If you remember those days, you get a gold star.

  • Now, I'll let you watch that video if you're interested, but today, I'm talking about a

  • new study, one of the first of its kind, that shifts that debate.

  • There's always a new study up in here isn't it?

  • The sex addiction study was published in the journal of Sociaffective Neuroscience & Psychology,

  • and it looked at 52 men and women who have trouble controlling their porn usage.

  • The researchers hooked them up to an EEG and monitored the neurons firing in their brains

  • while they various images.

  • The images were divvied up into a few categories. There were pleasant sexual, pleasant non-sexual,

  • neutral, and unpleasant images.

  • The study closely replicates how drug addiction has been researched around the world.

  • People addicted to alcohol, cocaine, heroine, that kind of thing.

  • In an addict, their brain gets all weird and nutty when they're shown a visual stimuli

  • of their addiction. So that's what the researchers expected to see if the sexy pics were to trigger

  • addictive impulses.

  • But that's not what they saw.

  • The EEG graphs came in and there's nothing particular or special of the brain's response

  • to the images.

  • The neuro activity didn't look like what you would expect to see of someone who is an addict.

  • It was no different than someone who has a high libido.

  • So, that's an interesting thingy.

  • Does this mean that sex addiction has been debunked for good and we can wave it bye bye?

  • Not quite.

  • The study will need to be repeated and other research teams will need to get the same results

  • independently before that's on the table.

  • But this is a significant step.

  • The researchers say these results alter our understanding of what we're calling a sex

  • addiction.

  • Possibly reframing it as an unusually high libido.

  • Which is an important difference. If it's a psychological addiction, that changes the

  • way we see normal sexuality.

  • It changes treatment options and how it's classified in the DSM.

  • And FYI, the new DSM refrained from a yay or nay on sex addiction as a disorder because

  • they say it needs more research.

  • What's surprising to me is that, in all this hubbub about sex addiction in the past 25

  • years, nobody thought, "Hey guys, maybe we should actually try to study this."

  • Science, people. It helps you learn a thing.

  • If this is all very confusing for you and you're like, "Laci I have no idea what's going

  • on! Where am I? What's sex addiction?"

  • Just, shhhhh. Watch my other video. It's all going to be okay.

  • Thanks for watching Dnews guys. We'll be back soon cause we update twice a day.

  • I'll see you then.

The sex addiction debate rages on. And that's not the only thing that's raging on, ya feel

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