What do "James Bond" Daniel Craig and American singer-actress Courtney Love have in common?

They're self-confessed sex addicts.

Sex addiction has long been derided as an imaginary "disease" used as an excuse by horny individuals to defend their sexual proclivities. It has, nevertheless, been gaining some credence in medical circles as a "disorder," or an abnormal condition affecting a person.

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Controversy continues to rage about whether a person can become addicted to sexual behaviors, including multiple sexual encounters. But this point of view might be in the process of changing.

Researchers at the University of Cambridge in England have finished the first study to investigate brain activity in sex addicts. The results of their research were recently published in the journal, PLoS One.

In the study, researchers compared the brains of people with compulsive sexual behavior and healthy people.

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, researchers discovered stunning similarities in the brains of people described as sex addicts and in the brains of drug addicts.

The FMRIs showed that the same reward centers of the brain in sex addicts were the same as those activated when addicts see their drug of choice.

The study showed higher levels of brain activity in the three parts of the brain: the ventral striatum, the amygdala and the dorsal anterior cingulate. It observed the changes in the brain activities of 19 men caused by watching pornographic videos.

Dr Valerie Voon of the University of Cambridge told the BBC this is the first study to look at people suffering from sex addiction and look at their brain activity.

"We don't know if some of these effects are predispositions, meaning that if you have greater activity in these areas are you more likely to develop these behaviors or if it is an effect of the pornography itself -- it's very difficult to tell."

She cautioned there was insufficient evidence to make a judgment on the impact of teenagers watching porn on the Internet. Other researchers said it's still controversial to say sex addicts are addicts since the field remains poorly researched in general.