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Human brain activity reflecting facial attractiveness from skin reflection

Facial attraction has a great influence on our daily social interactions. Previous studies have mainly focused on the attraction from facial shape and expression. We recently found that faces with radiant skin appear to be more attractive than those with oily-shiny or matte skin. In the present stud...

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Autores principales: Sakano, Yuichi, Wada, Atsushi, Ikeda, Hanako, Saheki, Yuriko, Tagai, Keiko, Ando, Hiroshi
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7900112/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33619295
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-82601-w
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author Sakano, Yuichi
Wada, Atsushi
Ikeda, Hanako
Saheki, Yuriko
Tagai, Keiko
Ando, Hiroshi
author_facet Sakano, Yuichi
Wada, Atsushi
Ikeda, Hanako
Saheki, Yuriko
Tagai, Keiko
Ando, Hiroshi
author_sort Sakano, Yuichi
collection PubMed
description Facial attraction has a great influence on our daily social interactions. Previous studies have mainly focused on the attraction from facial shape and expression. We recently found that faces with radiant skin appear to be more attractive than those with oily-shiny or matte skin. In the present study, we conducted functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and psychological experiments to determine the human brain activity that reflects facial attractiveness modulated by these skin reflection types. In the fMRI experiment, female subjects were shown successive images of unfamiliar female faces with matte, oily-shiny, or radiant skin. The subjects compared each face with the immediately preceding face in terms of attractiveness, age, and skin reflection, all based on the skin. The medial part of the orbitofrontal cortex (mOFC) was significantly more active when comparing attractiveness than when comparing skin reflection, suggesting that the mOFC is involved in processing facial attractiveness from skin reflection. In the psychological experiment, attractiveness rating was highest for radiant skin, followed by oily-shiny, and then matte skin. Comparison of the results of these experiments showed that mOFC activation level increased with attractiveness rating. These results suggest that the activation level of the mOFC reflects facial attractiveness from skin reflection.
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spelling pubmed-79001122021-02-24 Human brain activity reflecting facial attractiveness from skin reflection Sakano, Yuichi Wada, Atsushi Ikeda, Hanako Saheki, Yuriko Tagai, Keiko Ando, Hiroshi Sci Rep Article Facial attraction has a great influence on our daily social interactions. Previous studies have mainly focused on the attraction from facial shape and expression. We recently found that faces with radiant skin appear to be more attractive than those with oily-shiny or matte skin. In the present study, we conducted functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and psychological experiments to determine the human brain activity that reflects facial attractiveness modulated by these skin reflection types. In the fMRI experiment, female subjects were shown successive images of unfamiliar female faces with matte, oily-shiny, or radiant skin. The subjects compared each face with the immediately preceding face in terms of attractiveness, age, and skin reflection, all based on the skin. The medial part of the orbitofrontal cortex (mOFC) was significantly more active when comparing attractiveness than when comparing skin reflection, suggesting that the mOFC is involved in processing facial attractiveness from skin reflection. In the psychological experiment, attractiveness rating was highest for radiant skin, followed by oily-shiny, and then matte skin. Comparison of the results of these experiments showed that mOFC activation level increased with attractiveness rating. These results suggest that the activation level of the mOFC reflects facial attractiveness from skin reflection. Nature Publishing Group UK 2021-02-22 /pmc/articles/PMC7900112/ /pubmed/33619295 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-82601-w Text en © The Author(s) 2021 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Article
Sakano, Yuichi
Wada, Atsushi
Ikeda, Hanako
Saheki, Yuriko
Tagai, Keiko
Ando, Hiroshi
Human brain activity reflecting facial attractiveness from skin reflection
title Human brain activity reflecting facial attractiveness from skin reflection
title_full Human brain activity reflecting facial attractiveness from skin reflection
title_fullStr Human brain activity reflecting facial attractiveness from skin reflection
title_full_unstemmed Human brain activity reflecting facial attractiveness from skin reflection
title_short Human brain activity reflecting facial attractiveness from skin reflection
title_sort human brain activity reflecting facial attractiveness from skin reflection
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7900112/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33619295
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-82601-w
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