776
Views
72
CrossRef citations to date
0
Altmetric
Original Articles

Neural activation in the “reward circuit” shows a nonlinear response to facial attractiveness

, &
Pages 320-334 | Received 11 Jun 2009, Accepted 05 Jan 2010, Published online: 10 Mar 2010

REFERENCES

  • Aharon , I. , Etcoff , N. , Ariely , D. , Chabris , C. F. , O'Connor , E. and Breiter , H. C. 2001 . Beautiful faces have variable reward value: fMRI and behavioral evidence . Neuron , 32 : 537 – 551 .
  • Berscheid , E. and Walster , E. 1974 . “ Physical attractiveness ” . In Advances in experimental social psychology , Edited by: Berkowitz , L. 157 – 215 . New York : Academic Press .
  • Buchel , C. , Holmes , A. P. , Rees , G. and Friston , K. J. 1998 . Characterizing stimulus–response functions using nonlinear regressors in parametric fMRI experiments . NeuroImage , 8 : 140 – 148 .
  • Bunzeck , N. and Düzel , E. 2006 . Absolute coding of stimulus novelty in the human substantia nigra/VTA . Neuron , 51 : 369 – 379 .
  • Cloutier , J. , Heatherton , T. F. , Whalen , P. J. and Kelley , W. M. 2008 . Are attractive people rewarding? Sex differences in the neural substrates of facial attractiveness . Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience , 20 : 941 – 951 .
  • Cunningham , M. R. , Roberts , A. R. , Barbee , A. P. and Druen , P. B. 1995 . “Their ideas of beauty are, on the whole, the same as ours”: Consistency and variability in the cross-cultural perception of female physical attractiveness . Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , 68 : 261 – 279 .
  • Delgado , M. R. 2007 . “ Reward-related responses in the human striatum ” . In Reward and decision making in corticobasal ganglia networks , Edited by: Balleine , B. W. , Doya , K. , O'Doherty , J. and Sakagami , M. Vol. 1104 , 70 – 88 . New York : New York Academy of Sciences .
  • Delgado , M. R. , Locke , H. M. , Stenger , V. A. and Fiez , J. A. 2003 . Dorsal striatum responses to reward and punishment: Effects of valence and magnitude manipulations . Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience , 3 : 27 – 38 .
  • Dion , K. K. 2002 . “ Cultural perspectives on facial attractiveness ” . In Facial attractiveness: Evolutionary, cognitive, and social perspectives , Edited by: Rhodes , C. and Zebrowitz , L. A. 239 – 259 . Westport, CT : Ablex .
  • Eagly , A. H. , Ashmore , R. D. , Makhijani , M. G. and Longo , L. C. 1991 . What Is Beautiful Is Good, but: A meta-analytic review of research on the physical attractiveness stereotype . Psychological Bulletin , 110 : 109 – 128 .
  • Eichorn , D. H. 1981 . “ Samples and procedures ” . In Present and past in middle life , Edited by: Eichorn , D. H. , Clausen , J. A. , Haan , N. , Honzik , M. P. and Mussen , P. H. 33 – 51 . New York : Academic Press .
  • Elliott , R. , Newman , J. L. , Longe , O. A. and Deakin , J. F. W. 2003 . Differential response patterns in the striatum and orbitofrontal cortex to financial reward in humans: A parametric functional magnetic resonance imaging study . Journal of Neuroscience , 23 : 303 – 307 .
  • Fareri , D. S. , Martin , L. N. and Delgado , M. R. 2008 . Reward-related processing in the human brain: Developmental considerations . Development and Psychopathology , 20 ( 4 ) : 1191 – 1211 .
  • Feingold , A. 1992 . Good-looking people are not what we think . Psychological Bulletin , 111 : 304 – 341 .
  • Fitzgerald , D. A. , Angstadt , M. , Jelsone , L. M. , Nathan , P. J. and Phan , K. L. 2006 . Beyond threat: Amygdala reactivity across multiple expressions of facial affect . NeuroImage , 30 : 1441 – 1448 .
  • Grahn , J. A. , Parkinson , J. A. and Owen , A. M. 2008 . The cognitive functions of the caudate nucleus. [Review] . Progress in Neurobiology , 86 ( 3 ) : 141 – 155 .
  • Grammer , K. , Fink , B. , Moller , A. P. and Thornhill , R. 2003 . Darwinian aesthetics: Sexual selection and the biology of beauty . Biological Reviews , 78 : 385 – 407 .
  • Griffin , A. M. and Langlois , J. H. 2006 . Stereotype directionality and attractiveness stereotyping: Is beauty good or is ugly bad? . Social Cognition , 24 : 187 – 206 .
  • Gurevich , E. V. and Joyce , J. N. 1999 . Distribution of dopamine D-3 receptor expressing neurons in the human forebrain: Comparison with D-2 receptor expressing neurons . Neuropsychopharmacology , 20 : 60 – 80 .
  • Horvitz , J. C. 2000 . Mesolimbocortical and nigrostriatal dopamine responses to salient non-reward events . Neuroscience , 96 : 651 – 656 .
  • Hosokawa , T. , Kato , K. , Inoue , M. and Mikami , A. 2007 . Neurons in the macaque orbitofrontal cortex code relative preference of both rewarding and aversive outcomes . Neuroscience Research , 57 : 434 – 445 .
  • Ishai , A. 2007 . Sex, beauty and the orbitofrontal cortex . International Journal of Psychophysiology , 63 : 181 – 185 .
  • Jenkinson , M. , Bannister , P. R. , Brady , J. M. and Smith , S. M. 2002 . Improved optimisation for the robust and accurate linear registration and motion correction of brain images . NeuroImage , 17 : 825 – 841 .
  • Jensen , J. , McIntosh , A. R. , Crawley , A. P. , Mikulis , D. J. , Remington , G. and Kapur , S. 2003 . Direct activation of the ventral striatum in anticipation of aversive stimuli . Neuron , 40 : 1251 – 1257 .
  • Jensen , J. , Smith , A. J. , Willeit , M. , Crawley , A. P. , Mikulis , D. J. Vitcu , I. 2007 . Separate brain regions code for salience vs. valence during reward prediction in humans . Human Brain Mapping , 28 : 294 – 302 .
  • Kampe , K. K. W. , Frith , C. D. , Dolan , R. J. and Frith , U. 2001 . Reward value of attractiveness and gaze . Nature , 413 : 589 – 590 .
  • Kawabata , H. and Zeki , S. 2004 . Neural correlates of beauty . Journal of Neurophysiology , 91 ( 4 ) : 1699 – 1705 .
  • Koyama , T. , Kato , K. , Tanaka , Y. Z. and Mikami , A. 2001 . Anterior cingulate activity during pain-avoidance and reward tasks in monkeys . Neuroscience Research , 39 : 421 – 430 .
  • Kramer , S. , Zebrowitz , L. A. , San Giovanni , J. P. and Sherak , B. 1995 . “ Infants’ preferences for attractiveness and babyfaceness ” . In Studies in perception and action III , Edited by: Bardy , B. G. , Bootsma , R. J. and Guiard , Y. 389 – 392 . Mahwah, NJ : Lawrence Erlbaum Associates .
  • Kranz , F. and Ishai , A. 2006 . Face perception is modulated by sexual preference . Current Biology , 16 : 63 – 68 .
  • Krendl , A. C. , Macrae , C. N. , Kelley , W. M. , Fugelsang , J. A. and Heatherton , T. F. 2006 . The good, the bad, and the ugly: An fMRI investigation of the functional anatomic correlates of stigma . Social Neuroscience , 1 : 5 – 15 .
  • Kringelbach , M. L. and Rolls , E. T. 2004 . The functional neuroanatomy of the human orbitofrontal cortex: Evidence from neuroimaging and neuropsychology. [Review] . Progress in Neurobiology , 72 : 341 – 372 .
  • Langlois , J. H. , Kalakanis , L. , Rubenstein , A. J. , Larson , A. , Hallam , M. and Smoot , M. 2000 . Maxims or myths of beauty? A meta-analytic and theoretical review . Psychological Bulletin , 126 : 390 – 423 .
  • Langlois , J. H. , Ritter , J. M. , Roggman , L. A. and Vaughn , L. S. 1991 . Facial diversity and infant preferences for attractive faces . Developmental Psychology , 27 : 79 – 84 .
  • Langlois , J. H. and Roggman , L. A. 1990 . Attractive faces are only average . Psychological Science , 1 : 115 – 121 .
  • Liang , X. , Zebrowitz , L. A. and Aharon , I. 2009 . Effective connectivity between amygdala and orbitofrontal cortex differentiates the perception of facial expressions . Social Neuroscience , 4 : 185 – 196 .
  • Martinez , D. , Slifstein , M. , Broft , A. , Mawlawi , O. , Hwang , D. R. Huang , Y. 2003 . Imaging human mesolimbic dopamine transmission with positron emission tomography. Part II: amphetamine-induced dopamine release in the functional subdivisions of the striatum . Journal of Cerebral Blood Flow Metabolism , 23 : 285 – 300 .
  • Mawlawi , O. , Martinez , D. , Slifstein , M. , Broft , A. , Chatterjee , R. Hwang , D. R. 2001 . Imaging human mesolimbic dopamine transmission with positron emission tomography: I. Accuracy and precision of D(2) receptor parameter measurements in ventral striatum . Journal of Cerebral Blood Flow Metabolism , 21 : 1034 – 1057 .
  • Morris , J. S. , Frith , C. D. , Perrett , D. I. , Rowland , D. , Young , A. W. Calder , A. J. 1996 . A differential neural response in the human amygdala to fearful and happy facial expressions . Nature , 383 : 812 – 815 .
  • Nishijo , H. , Ono , T. and Nishino , H. 1988 . Topographic distribution of modality-specific amygdalar neurons in alert monkey . Journal of Neuroscience , 8 : 3556 – 3569 .
  • O'Doherty , J. P. , Buchanan , T. W. , Seymour , B. and Dolan , R. J. 2006 . Predictive neural coding of reward preference involves dissociable responses in human ventral midbrain and ventral striatum . Neuron , 49 : 157 – 166 .
  • O'Doherty , J. , Winston , J. , Critchley , H. , Perrett , D. , Burt , D. M. and Dolan , R. J. 2003 . Beauty in a smile: The role of medial orbitofrontal cortex in facial attractiveness . Neuropsychologia , 41 : 147 – 155 .
  • Phelps , E. A. 2006 . Emotion and cognition: Insights from studies of the human amygdala . Annual Review of Psychology , 57 : 27 – 53 .
  • Potter , T. , Corneille , O. , Ruys , K. I. and Rhodes , G. 2007 . “Just another pretty face”: A multidimensional scaling approach to face attractiveness and variability . Psychonomic Bulletin and Review , 14 : 368 – 372 .
  • Ramsey , J. L. , Langlois , J. H. , Hoss , R. A. , Rubenstein , A. J. and Griffin , A. M. 2004 . Origins of a stereotype: Categorization of facial attractiveness by 6-month-old infants . Developmental Science , 7 : 201 – 211 .
  • Rehnman , J. and Herlitz , A. 2007 . Women remember more faces than men do . Acta Psychologica , 124 : 344 – 355 .
  • Rhodes , G. and Tremewan , T. 1996 . Averageness, exaggeration, and facial attractiveness . Psychological Science , 7 : 105 – 110 .
  • Rhodes , G. and Zebrowitz , L. A. , eds. 2002 . Facial attrativeness: Evolutionary, cognitive, and social perspectives , Westport, CT : Ablex Publishing .
  • Said , C. P. , Baron , S. and Todorov , A. 2009 . Nonlinear amygdala response to face trustworthiness: Contributions of high and low spatial frequency information . Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience , 21 : 519 – 528 .
  • Seymour , B. , O'Doherty , J. P. , Dayan , P. , Koltzenburg , M. , Jones , A. K. Dolan , R. J. 2004 . Temporal difference models describe higher-order learning in humans . Nature , 429 : 664 – 667 .
  • Shaw , J. I. and Skolnick , P. 1994 . Sex differences, weapon focus, and eyewitness reliability . Journal of Social Psychology , 134 : 413 – 420 .
  • Walter , B. , Blecker , C. , Kirsch , P. , Sammer , G. , Schienle , A. Stark , R. MARINA: An easy to use tool for the creation of MAsks for Region of INterest Analyses . Presented at the 9th International Conference on Functional Mapping of the Human Brain . New York. June . Available on CD-Rom . [Abstract]NeuroImage, 19(2)
  • Ward, B. D. (2000). Simultaneous inference for fMRI data. http://afni.nimh.nih.gov/afni/docpdf/
  • Winston , J. S. , O'Doherty , J. , Kilner , J. M. , Perrett , D. I. and Dolan , R. J. 2007 . Brain systems for assessing facial attractiveness . Neuropsychologia , 45 : 195 – 206 .
  • Wright , D. B. and Sladden , B. 2003 . An own gender bias and the importance of hair in face recognition . Acta Psychologica , 114 : 101 – 114 .
  • Yamada , H. , Matsumoto , N. and Kimura , M. 2004 . Tonically active neurons in the primate caudate nucleus and putamen differentially encode instructed motivational outcomes of action . Journal of Neuroscience , 24 : 3500 – 3510 .
  • Zebrowitz , L. A. 1997 . Reading faces: Window to the soul? , Boulder, CO : Westview Press .
  • Zebrowitz , L. A. , Fellous , J. M. , Mignault , A. and Andreoletti , C. 2003 . Trait impressions as overgeneralized responses to adaptively significant facial qualities: Evidence from connectionist modeling . Personality and Social Psychology Review , 7 : 194 – 215 .
  • Zebrowitz , L. A. , Luevano , V. , Bronstad , M. P. and Aharon , I. 2009 . Neural activation to babyfaced men matches activation to babies . Social Neuroscience , 4 : 1 – 10 .
  • Zebrowitz , L. A. and Montepare , J. M. 2008 . Social psychological face perception: Why appearance matters . Social and Personality Psychology Compass , 2 : 1497 – 1517 .
  • Zebrowitz , L. A. , Olson , K. and Hoffman , K. 1993 . Stability of babyfaceness and attractiveness across the life span . Journal of Personality & Social Psychology , 64 : 453 – 466 .
  • Zebrowitz , L. A. and Rhodes , G. 2004 . Sensitivity to “bad genes” and the anomalous face overgeneralization effect: Accuracy, cue validity, and cue utilization in judging intelligence and health . Journal of Nonverbal Behavior , 28 : 167 – 185 .

Reprints and Corporate Permissions

Please note: Selecting permissions does not provide access to the full text of the article, please see our help page How do I view content?

To request a reprint or corporate permissions for this article, please click on the relevant link below:

Academic Permissions

Please note: Selecting permissions does not provide access to the full text of the article, please see our help page How do I view content?

Obtain permissions instantly via Rightslink by clicking on the button below:

If you are unable to obtain permissions via Rightslink, please complete and submit this Permissions form. For more information, please visit our Permissions help page.