What are these men looking at?

If you guessed porn, you’re correct. These faces appeared in a New York magazine article about the effects of porn on impotence.

What does a neurologist see when he sees faces like this? Dr. William Struthers of Wheaton College says these slack-jawed, deadening faces indicate a person is absent of positive emotion. He says a face like this is “indicative of poor frontal lobe functioning.”

Dr. Struthers’ recent talk at the Convergence Summit is filled with interesting comments like this. In 30 minutes, he brings the audience through a crash course on how pornography impacts the brain. “As a neuroscientist,” Struthers comments, “what I know is that the brain is perhaps the most sexual organ in the body.”

• Dr. Struthers shows how pornography “supercharges” the area of the brain called the hypothalamus, the part of the brain responsible for primary drives: eating, drinking and sex.
• Dr. Struthers talks about how pornography taps into the area of the brain—called the amygdala—that is responsible for negative emotions such as stress or anxiety or sexual tension.
• Dr. Struthers also talks about how viewing pornography and masturbating weakens the region of our brain known as the singular cortex, the region that is responsible for moral and ethical decision making.

Not many people realize that there have been many studies done on the effect of pornography on the brain. Dr. Struthers distills this information in a way that is accessible to a general audience.

You can now watch all of Dr. Struthers’ talk, as well as talks given by several other scientific minds from the Convergence Summit.

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