Hancock PJB

Holliday IE

Longe OA

Thai  NJ

Tovée MJ

In perceptual terms, the human body is a complex 3d shape which has to be interpreted by the observer to judge its attractiveness. Both body mass and shape have been suggested as strong predictors of female attractiveness. Normally body mass and shape co-vary, and it is difficult to differentiate their separate effects. Platek &amp; Singh (2010) suggested that altering body mass does not modulate activity in the reward mechanisms of the brain, but shape does. However, using computer generated female bodies, based on a Principal Component Analysis of real female bodies, we were able to construct images which covary with real female body mass (indexed with BMI) and not with body shape (indexed with WHR), and vice versa. Twelve observers rated these images for attractiveness during an fMRI study. The attractiveness ratings were correlated with changes in BMI and not WHR. Our primary fMRI results demonstrated that in addition to activation in higher visual areas (such as the extrastriate body area), changing BMI also modulated activity in the caudate nucleus, part of the reward centres. This shows that BMI, not WHR, modulates reward mechanisms in the brain and this has important implications for judgements of ideal body size in eating disordered individuals

BMI not WHR Modulates BOLD fMRI Responses in a Sub-Cortical Reward Network When Participants Judge the Attractiveness of Human Female Bodies

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