WEDNESDAY, Oct. 10, 2001 (HealthDayNews) -- You're at a crowded party some enchanted evening when your eyes lock with the gaze of an attractive stranger. Love at first sight? Perhaps, but it could also be self-interest of a different sort.
In addition to setting off a shower of sparks, the direct stare of an attractive person triggers a burst of activity in the brain's ventral striatum, an area involved in reward feedback, says a new study by British researchers. What's more, they say sex appeal doesn't appear to play much of a role in the response, taking a back seat to other motivations, like social standing.
The findings appear in the Oct. 11 issue of Nature.
Researchers led by neuroscientist Dr. Knut Kampe of University College in London showed 160 photographs of men and women to 16 volunteers, split evenly by gender, and used a form of magnetic resonance imaging to measure the activity of their brain cells during the task. They also asked the subjects to rate people in the pictures on their attractiveness.
When the eyes of the photo faces stared directly at the camera, neurons in the ventral striatum were most excited, suggesting that "eye contact" held the key to an expected reward, Kampe says. The subjects responded least when such eye contact didn't occur. "If an attractive face ignores you, you're obviously not getting the reward you're expecting," Kampe says.
What's the nature of this mysterious return? It's not merely sexual gratification, Kampe says.
Intriguingly, the ventral striatum, which links the brain's motor and emotional centers, seems to appreciate that attractiveness is gender-blind; the reward effect occurred when men viewed men and women viewed women. It also goes beyond mere physical beauty to include other factors, like the determination or enthusiasm of a person's expressions. Attractiveness may therefore be grounded in "low-level features" of a face, such as its symmetry, that aren't necessarily beautiful, Kampe says.
And while the prospect of sex with an attractive person is obviously a plus, Kampe says other factors also are important from the perspective of perpetuating one's genes or the species. "It might be just as rewarding to meet a friend or a career promoter," he says.
Studies have shown that attractiveness leads to higher social status, meaning attractive people are likely to be influential. And since humans are social animals with a great deal at stake in their relationship with others, "It's extremely important to know very quickly what can I get from this person when I meet him," Kampe says.
So what happens when a not-so-appealing person looks your way? "If an unattractive person looks you in the eye, the results would suggest it would be disappointing. It might be a relief if they looked away," Kampe says.
"Attractive faces have a hotline to our pleasure centers. We crave their attention," says David Perrett, a psychologist who studies visual learning at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. However, Perrett adds, "The paper is important since it shows a dimension of social interaction is important in judgments of beauty. A woman may look like a Greek goddess, but what counts for me is whether or not she shows interest in interacting with me."
What To Do
To find out more about the psychology of love, visit About.com. For more on cognitive neuroscience, try the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience.
