The neural basis of scene preferences

What is the neural correlate of preference that governs our spontaneous selection of visual information? With a rapid, event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging design, we showed that the viewing of highly preferred compared to less preferred scenes (as assessed by participant ratings) was associated with greater blood-oxygen level dependent responses in the right parahippocampal cortex but not in the lateral occipital complex, ruling out feed forward and attentional effects. Highly preferred images also produced greater activation in the ventral striatum, suggesting that perceptual preference might engage the conventional reward system. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that high activity in the parahippocampal cortex, an area with a high density of cortical μ-opioid receptors, may be experienced as cognitively pleasurable.