According to a study, watching pornographic shows can interfere with short-term short-term memories of someone. This study was the first study to test the influence between watching pornographic shows and brain function in storing short-term memories.
Short-term memories need humans to maintain information in the mind while running a task or work. Short-term memories are responsible for understanding, troubleshooting, and decision making.
German researchers have studied 28 heterosexual men with an average age of 26 years. The men are asked to see some pictures on the computer screen. Some pictures are pornographic images and others not. Images that do not contain pornography are images of people laughing, exercising, and driving.
After the men saw the pictures, they had to press the "yes" or "no" button to show the image they saw next was the same picture as they had seen before. As a result, they answer more wrong in images that have pornographic elements, compared to images that do not contain that element.
The average man answered 80 percent correctly in the picture of no porn, and 67 percent correctly on pornographic images. Their short-term memory abilities get worse because they are disturbed by sexual desire and their desire to do sexual activities when looking at pornographic images.
"Sexual desire disturbs short-term memories, which is an important aspect of the executive function," said one of the students from the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany who conducted this research.
The study published in the Journal of Sex Research can help psychologists to understand why people who are addicted to porn shows often forget to sleep, skip promises, responsibilities, work, and troubled with their partners.
Source: LiveScience
