Luxury Cues Facilitate the Connection Between Social Dominance and Reward Mediated by the Lateral Prefrontal Cortex

Luxury skin care products have emotional value because of their texture and accompanying product information. The influence of these factors appears to be linked. Here, we investigated the influence of information on brain activity during hand massages with skin care creams in healthy female volunteers. In the first session, participants received hand massages using two skin care creams (luxury and basic). In the second session, participants were shown information which indicated whether each cream was a luxury or basic product during the massage. In the third session, they received a hand massage as per the first session. Functional magnetic resonance imaging data were recorded during massages. Differential activity in the ventral striatum (VS), the caudate nucleus, and the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (DMPFC) was significantly higher in the third session than in the first session. Moreover, differential activity in the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) was positively correlated with differential activity in both the VS and the DMPFC in the third session. These results suggest that the neural substrate of the effects is based on both the dopamine reward system and the self-other distinction system involved in social dominance and that the right DLPFC plays a critical role in the association between these systems.