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Beauty in a smile: the role of medial orbitofrontal cortex in facial attractiveness
Open accessAbstract
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.
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“Watson and colleagues [334] outlined a framework delineating linkages between AN and reward-processing deficits. Their model stressed the highly social nature of eating, the overlapping reward circuitry of gustatory and social stimuli [335,336], and the tendency of individuals with AN to deprive themselves of pleasure.”
From Reward circuitry dysfunction in psychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders and genetic syndromes: animal models and clinical findings (2012) · cites this paper as [336]
In the citing paper
“The observation of social stimuli in general (e.g., smiling faces) increases activity in medial prefrontal cortex 33, 34 and striatum in cases where the social stimuli have a high value (e.g., participants will exert effort or pay to view an attractive face) 35–38.”
From The social brain and reward: Social information processing in the human striatum (2014) · cites this paper as [33]
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Self-citation
Metadata
- Authors
- O’Doherty, J., Winston, J., Critchley, H., Perrett, D., Burt, D. M., & Dolan, R. J.
- Affiliations
- National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery (GB)
- University of St Andrews (GB)
- The Royal Free Hospital (GB)
- Corresponding author
- O’Doherty, J
- Venue
- Neuropsychologia
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2003-01
- Volume
- 41
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 147-155
- ISSN
- 0028-3932 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2138900344
- Cited by
- 898
- References
- 54
- Citations by year
- 2026: 14 · 2025: 17 · 2024: 27 · 2023: 35 · 2022: 22 · 2021: 39 · 2020: 37 · 2019: 52 · 2018: 31 · 2017: 41 · 2016: 52 · 2015: 47 · 2014: 49 · 2013: 62 · 2012: 47
- FWCI
- 37.16
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- hdl.handle.net
- Licence
- Locations
- Neuropsychologia (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- UCL Discovery (University College London) (submittedVersion)
- Max Planck Digital Library (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- MPG.PuRe (Max Planck Society) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Funders
- Wellcome Trust
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Evolutionary Psychology and Human Behavior
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Face Recognition and Perception
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies
- Keywords
- facial attractiveness, medial orbitofrontal cortex, reward value, mate choice, social signals, face perception
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Beauty, Brain Mapping, Facial Expression, Female, Frontal Lobe, Humans, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Male, Sex Factors, Smiling, Social Behavior, Social Perception, Visual Perception
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