Beauty appears to stimulate the same brain region as the opioid morphine, a new study on how the brain perceives beautiful faces has found.
Just like tasty food or good music, "being attached to someone, like a romantic partner, is rewarding for people," said study researcher Olga Chelnokova, a psychologist at the University of Oslo, in Norway.
Chelnokova and her colleagues recruited 30 healthy men for their study. Some of the men were given morphine, which activates receptors in the opioid system, and others received 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, 'LiveScience' reported.
Participants who were given morphine rated the most objectively attractive faces very highly.
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.
In comparison, the men taking the opioid suppressor showed less liking and wanting: They rated the attractive faces less highly and spent less time viewing them.
Thus, the opioid system might help humans choose the best mate by producing rewarding feelings when seeing those mates, while making unattractive mates less desirable, researchers said.
The research is published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry.
