The human desire to look at attractive faces plays a role in how people select their partners, and the rewarding feeling beauty arouses has its roots in the brain, new research reveals.
In fact, the researchers found attractiveness seems to stimulate the same brain region as the opioid morphine.
The opioid system is the part of the brain that encodes "liking." The related but distinct dopamine system controls "wanting."
Olga Chelnokova, a psychologist at the University of Oslo, in Norway and her colleagues recruited 30 healthy men for their study. The researchers gave some of the men morphine, which activates receptors in the opioid system, and gave others an opioid suppressor.
The scientists showed the men photographs of women's faces that varied in attractiveness, which the men could flip through at their own speed. The scientists asked the men to rate how much they liked each of the faces and measured how long they lingered on each one.
Participants who were given morphine rated the most objectively attractive faces very highly in other words, they liked them more than the other faces. In addition, the morphine takers spent more time viewing the pictures of the faces they found most attractive and less time viewing unattractive faces, suggesting they also wanted those faces more.
By contrast, the men taking the opioid suppressor showed less liking and wanting: They rated the attractive faces less highly and spent less time viewing them.
(Fox News)
Bütün xəbərlər Facebook səhifəmizdə
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
USD
EUR
GBP
RUB