The role of the posterior temporal and medial prefrontal cortices in mediating learning from romantic interest and rejection.

ABSTRACT: Romantic interest or rejection can be powerful incentives not merely for their emotional impact, but for their potential to transform, in a single interaction, what we think we know about another person--or ourselves. Little is known, though, about how the brain computes expectations for, and learns from, real-world romantic signals. In a novel "speed-dating" paradigm, we had participants meet potential romantic partners in a series of 5-min "dates," and decide whether they would be interested in seeing each partner again. Afterward, participants were scanned with functional magnetic resonance imaging while they were told, for the first time, whether that partner was interested in them or rejected them. Expressions of interest and rejection activated regions previously associated with "men

SUBMITTER: Cooper JC 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3820469 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature