It’s not the size of your striatum that matters, it’s what you do with it

I keep having weird thoughts when I meet people. Not all people, but some. For guys (like this dude that was working a convenience store I happened into the other day), I wonder what kind of porn they watch. I try and pick if it’s classy or kinky or raunchy or just tasteless. I find myself sorting through various genres in my head and trying to match it to the guy in front of me. Harder than it may sound since I think one’s porn preferences are, more than anything, a mirror to one’s soul and souls are rarely on display.

I mention this because of the recent “porn makes men stupid” articles that have been floating around. This bit is from The Daily Mirror:

Too much porn can make men stupid, scientists have revealed.

A study by German researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development found that men who watch a lot of porn generally have a smaller striatum.

The striatum is the part of the brain which processes ‘rewards and motivation’ – leading scientists to believe that pornography damages this function.

They can also have less grey matter, making their brains generally smaller than those of men who rarely watch it.

And I’m thinking, wait a minute. How do they know the porn makes the brains smaller? Maybe their brains were smaller to begin with and that’s why they look at the porn.

The female leading author of the study Simone Kühn, did point out however, that it isn’t clear whether X rated material is making brains smaller, or whether men with a decreased striatum tend to watch it more often.

Oh. OK. Well, at least they were thinking about that. And, you know, I look at a lot of fucking porn, so maybe my brain’s OK after all.

I don’t know if porn makes me stupid, but I can certainly feel stupid while looking at it. Sometimes, I can get lost in it and lose complete track of time. Usually, guys have a built-in governor in their orgasm that makes them stop but guys like me don’t have that. We just keep making whatever brain chemical gets made when we’re aroused (not to be confused with the other kind of fluid that leaks out of our penises) and it’s some pretty fucking potent stuff. So that’s me, the slack-jawed, glassy-eyed porn addict letting his striatum wither away as he looks at an endless Tumblr stream of raunch and sodomy.

That striatum thingy was new to me so I looked it up. According to the Wikipedia:

In humans, the striatum is activated by stimuli associated with reward, but also by aversive, novel, unexpected, or intense stimuli, and cues associated with such events.

It’s been a really long time since I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express, but that’s really interesting to me. Clearly, people like me aren’t hooked up in the typical way vis-a-vis the whole “reward and motivation” system. I’m not motivated like most people and the things I find rewarding most others would think were kinda fucked up.

In an unrelated but also kinda not turn of events, I found again this old article from The Daily Beast about cuckolding being the “intellectual sex fetish.”  I don’t know about that, but I had a hard time even finishing that article at work.

This isn’t like swinging, and it’s not a threesome. Cuckolded men (aka “cucks”) only observe their wives’ infidelities, they don’t participate. And that’s why they find it a turn-on: They’re left out, looking on as the woman they love climaxes with a better man than them. It’s a form of psychological sadomasochism. Some people get turned on by whips, chains, and physical pain. Cucks get aroused by mental anguish.

Yeah, and some of us get turned on by whips and chains and physical pain and the idea of our wive’s fucking around with other guys.

“Imagine looking at the guy who’s about to go to bed with your wife. Imagine hearing the man crying out in bed with your wife,” says Paul, who pleasures himself “like a madman” during these encounters. “The high point of cuckolding is when your wife says she wants the other guy all the time and never wants you. Sally’s body makes it very clear that this is true. It hurts me worse to know this, so it’s better to know.” Worst/best of all is watching Sally bond with the other man not only physically but emotionally—when, as Paul puts it, she’s “masturbating him with her mind.”

I wonder how the striatum is similar in kinky folk and different from the vanilla kind (if at all). Or maybe I need to stop thinking I’m on the cast of St. Elsewhere and just roll with it.

Oh, and the weird thing I think about when I meet some women is what they look like giving head. Or if they actually do give head. Or swallow. Or let their boyfriends fuck their ass. That kind of thing. So, if we ever meet, you’ll know I’m either thinking about your porn habits or imagining you with a big cock in your mouth. Sorry. Nothing personal. Can hardly control it…