By Jay Lindsay, Associated Press, 11/9/2001 05:10
BOSTON (AP) A new study on a man's reaction to seeing beautiful women indicates the pleasure experienced in the brain is similar to a hungry man's when he eats, or an addict's when he get his fix.
It's proof that feminine beauty affects the brain past the parts that compose poetry, right to its basic functions, researchers said.
"Beauty is working similar to a drug," said Dan Ariely of Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management, a co-author of the study, published Wednesday in the journal Neuron.
The study by researchers at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital measured the brain responses of a group of heterosexual males to pictures of men and women of varying attractiveness.
The pictures of beautiful women activated the same "reward circuits" in the brain as food, pleasant tastes and cocaine.
The fact men enjoy looking at beautiful women is hardly shocking, but study author Hans Breiter said evidence that beauty stimulates these primal brain circuits has never been shown.
It counters arguments that beauty is nothing more than a socially constructed value, Breiter said.
"This is hard-core circuitry," Breiter said, comparing its basic job to the same function found in lizards. "This is not a conditioned response."
John Mazziotta, Director of UCLA's Brain Mapping Center, said the results may lead to new ways of studying aesthetic values, such as beauty.
"We think of these things as a products of a very high level of thought, and it may be very basic and fundamental," he said.
The study, conducted over three years, included eight heterosexual men in their 20s who judged the attractiveness of men and women shown in pictures.
Another group of 15 men were shown the pictures randomly for several seconds, but could extend or cut the viewing time by pressing certain keys on a keypad.
Attractive women were viewed an average of 8.7 seconds, while average women were viewed for 5.2 seconds. The men worked frantically to keep the beautiful women on the screen, each pressing the keyboard an average of more than 6,700 times in the 40 minute session.
"These guys look like rodents bar-pressing for cocaine," Breiter said.
Neuroimaging of the brain during the activity showed the activation in the "reward circuitry" of the brain.
Not surprisingly, the men didn't expend effort to view the men they deemed attractive, which Breiter cited as proof of a disassociation within the brain between liking something and wanting it.
In fact, Breiter said, brain signal changes indicated the men had an adverse reaction to good-looking males, suggesting they were threatened by them.
Ariely said it's significant that beauty, which is known to have some social components, can take a place in brain function beside basic physical needs like nutrition. In could have major implications in the study of what motivates people, he said.
"There's a social stimulus that's able to acquire the same status as a food or drug," Ariely said. "That's incredible."
Steven Hyman, director of The National Institute of Mental Health, said he was struck that a man's private judgment about beauty could be seen in brain activity.
"To a layperson, it should be a bit disquieting that brain science is being used to investigate how the brain processes our ordinary thinking and response to life," he said.
"Clearly, somebody can't sneak up on you and stuff you in an MRI," he added. "But the issue of the privacy of your thoughts is one to ponder."
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