'Scanning the brain' to find the right partner

Through brain scans, researchers from Trinity University of Ireland and US technology firm Caltech have discovered two areas of the brain that are closely related to the decision to choose a partner in humans.

This study was conducted on 73 male volunteers and 78 young female volunteers at Trinity University.

After participating in dating situations for 5 minutes and looking for images of an opposite sex, 39 volunteers agreed to scan the brain with a functional magnetic resonance machine (fMRI). At the same time, these volunteers were also asked to evaluate the attractiveness of the people they dated and desired according to a scale of 1-4.

The two regions of the cortex have a strong influence on the decision
choose a sexual partner in a person in quick dating.

Through analysis, the researchers found different parts of the prefrontal cortex closely related to the decision of volunteers to choose partners. In particular, if a volunteer sees his partner physically attractive, the area of ​​the medial lobe (paracingulate) lights up. If any volunteer sees his partner as unexpected, even if he or she finds it physically attractive, then the rostromedial region will light up.

That explains why, even at first glance, that many people can decide to love each other with little information about their partners. But if the paracingulate is related to the evaluation of physical attraction, the rostromedial part determines the social factor and the connection between the physical and psychological factors in each person's partner selection.

The whole new study is published in The Journal of Neuroscience.