Neural and behavioral responses to attractiveness in adult and infant faces

Abstract

Facial attractiveness provides a very powerful motivation for sexual and parental behavior. We therefore review the importance of faces to the study of neurobiological control of human reproductive motivations. For heterosexual individuals there is a common brain circuit involving the nucleus accumbens, the medial prefrontal, dorsal anterior cingulate and the orbitofrontal cortices that is activated more by attractive than unattractive faces, particularly for faces of the opposite sex. Behavioral studies indicate parallel effects of attractiveness on incentive salience or willingness to work to see faces. Both work/effort and brain activation to the sight of opposite sex attractiveness is more pronounced in men than women, perhaps reflecting the greater importance assigned to physical attractiveness by men when evaluating a potential mate. Studies comparing heterosexual and homosexual observers indicate the orbitofrontal cortex and mediodorsal thalamus are more activated by faces of the desired sex than faces of the less preferred sex, independent of observer gender or sexual orientation. Infant faces activate brain regions that partially overlap with those responsive to adult faces. Infant faces provide a powerful stimulus, which also elicits sex differences in behavior and brain responses that appear dependent on sex hormones. There are many facial dimensions affecting perceptions of attractiveness that remain unexplored in neuroimaging, and we conclude by suggesting that future studies combining parametric manipulation of face images, brain imaging, hormone assays and genetic polymorphisms in receptor sensitivity are needed to understand the neural and hormonal mechanisms underlying reproductive drives.3

Women gaze behaviour in assessing female bodies: the effects of clothing, body size, own body composition and body satisfaction

“…This possibility for women to judge their own attractiveness value and monitor competitors might be what drives their gaze patterns when viewing female body images, and suggests a preoccupation with the need for social comparison to establish one's own 'market value' or social learning to acquire tips on how to improve one's 'market value' (Hahn & Perrett, 2014). This view has been further supported by women's preference for viewing other female bodies.…”

The neurobiology and evolutionary foundations of the perception of beauty

“…The evaluation of facial characteristics gives us information not only about a person's sex, age, race, etc., but also finer details of relevance in social life such as their emotions, reliability, attractiveness, and intentions (33). In humans and monkeys, the facial processing area is essentially in the lateral fusiform gyrus (the fusiform face area), which is part of the occipitotemporal cortex (34,35).…”

“…In brain activity studies conducted with fMRI, it was found that when humans are shown the picture of an attractive face from the opposite sex, the brain -in comparison to looking at faces that are not attractiveshows an increase in activity in the regions of OFC, mPFC, nucleus accumbens, and anterior and posterior cingulate regions (33,130,(132)(133)(134)(135). These areas are generally associated with the brain's reward system and thus it is believed that looking at the attractive face of the opposite sex has a rewarding effect on a person.…”

Brain responses to facial attractiveness induced by facial proportions: evidence from an fMRI study

“…Furthermore, our recent behavioral studies have demonstrated gender differences in ranking facial physical attractiveness25. In fact, there has been some evidence of subject gender-by-attractiveness in judging face attractiveness, especially in evaluating opposite-sex faces263335. For example, increased responses in some reward-encoding regions such as OFC35 and anterior cingulate26 were observed only for male participants.…”

“…Behavioral studies have indicated that men assign greater importance to physical attractiveness compared with women when evaluating a potential mate33. More specifically, sexual preferences for some facial features, such as lip size, mouth width, cheekbones height and chin size, could result in gender differences in the perception of facial attractiveness2034.…”