Neuroscientists
have discovered that eye-to-eye contact unleashes a burst of activity in
the reward center of the brain

Romantic novelists rarely fail to include in their oeuvre that
special moment when two strangers look into each other's eyes across a
crowded room and feel the tingle of desire.

The Barbara Cartland school of writing has now been validated by
science, for experts have discovered that eye-to-eye contact in fact
unleashes a burst of activity in the reward center of the brain.

Neuroscientists at University College London asked eight female and
eight male volunteers to look at photos of the faces of 40 different
people who were either looking at the camera or gazing to one side.

While the volunteers looked at the pictures, they were given a scan
with functional magnetic resonance imaging, which measures increased
blood flows to the various parts of the brain and thus provides a
"map" of cerebral activity.

The guinea pigs were then asked to rate the attractiveness of each
face, and their score was matched against the scan.

The result: when volunteer had direct eye contact with the face,
there was an increase of activity in the ventral striatum, a central
part of the brain that anticipates reward or pleasure. But if the eyes
did not meet, there was no activity in that brain area at all.

The activity increase occurred regardless of the gender of the face
in direct eye contact.

However, there was a bigger-than-usual increase if the person giving
the eye was found to be attractive. Activity in the ventral striatum
surged, in an apparent sign of the sexual appetite being sharpened.

But if the cute person gazed to one side, the ventral striatum
remained dormant, apparently disappointed that the stranger was clearly
not interested.

Interestingly, the ventral striatum also perked up if a plug-ugly
person gazed to one side, rather than looked at the volunteer right in
the eyes. "Missing eye contact with an unattractive face may be a
relief, and thus enhance activity," the researchers suggest.