5492 - Beauty is brain deep

Beauty is brain deep: Why face and form are more alluring to men than women.

There’s an anatomical brain divide as wide as the wingspan of a pelican. It’s on full display on the sunny shores of Miami: Most men gawk at a bodacious bikini babe tanning herself on a towel spread out on the hot sand. But when a dude struts across the surf in his banana hammock, most ladies grimace (some even gag) regardless of how buff he may be.

Chinese scientists, in 2016, subjected 41 young adults to functional MRI while they perused pictures of attractive members of the opposite sex. Unsurprisingly, they reported that checking out hotties fires up the brains of men and women alike. The more beautiful the person in the picture, the more electrical activity surged in the caudate nucleus (part of which modifies movement, part of which (striatum) imparts warm feelings of reward) and the prefrontal cortex (an area that controls executive function).

The researchers recorded an additional gush, which flowed only in the brains of the male volunteers: A particular nucleus in the right-sided amygdala (an area of the brain involved in emotions and memories), in only the male subjects, lit up on the fMRI in response to attractive women.