Figure 1.

Experimental setup and behavioral results. (a) The experiment can be divided into three sessions. During the first session (before stimulation), participants made facial attractiveness judgements. During the second session, participants were stimulated with transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) for 15 min. During the final session (after stimulation) participants again made facial attractiveness judgments. The main and active sham groups were scanned with functional magnetic resonance imaging during the before and after stimulation sessions and were removed from the scanner during stimulation. (b) At the beginning of each trial of the behavioral task, participants were shown a face and made a rating of how attractive they found the face on a scale from 0–7; 0 being not attractive at all and 7 being very attractive. (c) Anodal stimulation of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) and cathodal stimulation of the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) (main stimulation group) resulted in a significant increase in mean attractiveness ratings (*P<0.05). We performed a number of control conditions on separate groups of participants, none of which resulted in a significant increase in attractiveness ratings (For a complete description of the control results, see Supplementary Figure S1). To allow for a more focal stimulation of VMPFC in the main group, we administered tDCS with a small electrode over VMPFC and a large electrode over DLPFC. Error bars denote s.e.m. a.u., arbitrary units.