Kranz Felicitas, Ishai Alumit
Institute of Neuroradiology, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland; Institute for Biomedical Engineering, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich, Switzerland.
Curr Biol. 2006 Jan 10;16(1):63-8. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2005.10.070.
Face perception is mediated by a distributed neural system in the human brain . The response to faces is modulated by cognitive factors such as attention, visual imagery, and emotion ; however, the effects of gender and sexual orientation are currently unknown. We used fMRI to test whether subjects would respond more to their sexually preferred faces and predicted such modulation in the reward circuitry. Forty heterosexual and homosexual men and women viewed photographs of male and female faces and assessed facial attractiveness. Regardless of their gender and sexual orientation, all subjects similarly rated the attractiveness of both male and female faces. Within multiple, bilateral face-selective regions in the visual cortex, limbic system, and prefrontal cortex, similar patterns of activation were found in all subjects in response to both male and female faces. Consistent with our hypothesis, we found a significant interaction between stimulus gender and the sexual preference of the subject in the thalamus and medial orbitofrontal cortex, where heterosexual men and homosexual women responded more to female faces and heterosexual women and homosexual men responded more to male faces. Our findings suggest that sexual preference modulates face-evoked activation in the reward circuitry.
面部感知由人类大脑中的一个分布式神经系统介导。对面部的反应会受到注意力、视觉意象和情感等认知因素的调节；然而，性别和性取向的影响目前尚不清楚。我们使用功能磁共振成像来测试受试者是否会对其性偏好的面孔有更强的反应，并预测奖励回路中的这种调节作用。40名异性恋和同性恋男性及女性观看男性和女性面孔的照片，并对面部吸引力进行评估。无论其性别和性取向如何，所有受试者对男性和女性面孔吸引力的评分都相似。在视觉皮层、边缘系统和前额叶皮层的多个双侧面部选择性区域内，所有受试者对男性和女性面孔的反应都呈现出相似的激活模式。与我们的假设一致，我们发现，在丘脑和内侧眶额皮层中，刺激性别与受试者的性偏好之间存在显著的交互作用，其中异性恋男性和同性恋女性对女性面孔的反应更强，异性恋女性和同性恋男性对男性面孔的反应更强。我们的研究结果表明，性偏好会调节奖励回路中由面孔诱发的激活。
