送交者: xj 于 2006-1-19, 16:56:01:
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The researchers found that, consistent with their hypothesis, the gender of a viewed individual, when the sexual preference of the viewer was taken into account, did make a difference in the reactions seen in the thalamus and the orbitofrontal cortex, a region of the brain's reward circuitry. Heterosexual women and homosexual men exhibited a significantly greater response to male faces, whereas heterosexual men and homosexual women responded significantly more to female faces.
The orbitofrontal cortex is known to be involved in representing the reward value of various sensory stimuli, including beautiful faces, as well as the reward value of abstract positive (for example, money) and negative (for example, punishment) entities. What could this mean for interpreting socially relevant information? Past work has shown that patients with lesions in orbitofrontal cortex are impaired in their ability to identify emotional facial expressions, suggesting that this region has an important role in the processing of facial cues required for social communication. In this light, the researchers suggest that the observed modulation by sexual preference of the response to faces within the orbitofrontal cortex extends the role of this brain region in social behavior.
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