The contribution of the orbitofrontal cortex to the preference for visual stimuli

Both humans and animals like to watch neutral and biologically insignificant visual stimuli. Behavioral studies have revealed that animals more frequently select stimuli with symmetrical and regular patterns and short movies compared to stimuli with unsymmetrical and irregular patterns and photographs. Preferred visual stimuli can serve as rewards for animals performing behavioral tasks. Preferences for visual stimuli are determined by the magnitude of the pleasant feelings that are experienced when the stimuli are seen. The orbitofrontal cortex is known to participate in the detection and prediction of reward, the estimation of the value of the stimuli as a reward, and positive emotion. Human neuroimaging studies and animal neurophysiological studies have shown that the magnitude of orbitofrontal responses to the presentation of neutral visual stimuli correlates with the strength of the preference for the stimuli in the behavioral studies. These results suggest that the magnitude of orbitofrontal responses to the visual stimuli correlates with the strength of the pleasant feelings that are produced by the stimuli and that the orbitofrontal cortex plays an important role in the judgment of the preference for visual stimuli.