Abstract
The brain circuitry processing rewarding and aversive stimuli is hypothesized to be at the core of motivated behavior. In this study, discrete categories of beautiful faces are shown to have differing reward values and to differentially activate reward circuitry in human subjects. In particular, young heterosexual males rate pictures of beautiful males and females as attractive, but exert effort via a keypress procedure only to view pictures of attractive females. Functional magnetic resonance imaging at 3 T shows that passive viewing of beautiful female faces activates reward circuitry, in particular the nucleus accumbens. An extended set of subcortical and paralimbic reward regions also appear to follow aspects of the keypress rather than the rating procedures, suggesting that reward circuitry function does not include aesthetic assessment.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 537-551 |
| Number of pages | 15 |
| Journal | Neuron |
| Volume | 32 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Nov 8 2001 |
Funding
This work was supported by grants to Dr. Breiter from the National Institutes of Drug Abuse (grants #00265 and #09467), the Office of National Drug Control Policy and Counterdrug Technology Assessment Center (ONDCP-CTAC), and Drs. Breiter and Aharon from the National Center for Responsible Gaming (NCRG). Dr. Breiter was also supported by the National Foundation for Functional Brain Imaging. Dr. Etcoff was supported by the Lynn M. Reid Fellowship of Harvard Medical School, and Dr. Chabris by a postdoctoral fellowship from the National Institutes of Health through the MGH-NMR Center. We would like to thank Alex Pentland and Elizabeth Huffman for their help and assistance and Mark E. Glickman for statistical consultation.
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- General Neuroscience