Beauty in a smile: the role of medial orbitofrontal cortex in facial attractiveness.
The attractiveness of a face is a highly salient social signal, influencing mate choice and other social judgements. In this study, we used event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate brain regions that respond to attractive faces which manifested either a neutral or mildly happy face expression. Attractive faces produced activation of medial orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), a region involved in representing stimulus-reward value. Responses in this region were further enhanced by a smiling facial expression, suggesting that the reward value of an attractive face as indexed by medial OFC activity is modulated by a perceiver directed smile.
O'Doherty
J
J
Wellcome Department of Imaging Neuroscience, Institute of Neurology, 12 Queen Square, London WC1 3BG, UK. j.odoherty@fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk
Winston
J
J
Critchley
H
H
Perrett
D
D
Burt
D M
DM
Dolan
R J
RJ
D000328:Adult; D001504:Beauty; D001931:Brain Mapping; D005149:Facial Expression; D005260:Female; D005625:Frontal Lobe / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D012737:Sex Factors; D012904:Smiling / Q000502:physiology*; D012919:Social Behavior; D012938:Social Perception; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*