Enjoyment of watching pimple popping videos: An fMRI investigation

Abstract

BackgroundMillions of people enjoy watching videos of pimple treatments. The underlying neural mechanisms of this enjoyment have not been investigated so far. MethodWe administered a total of 96 video clips from three categories: Pimple Popping (PP), Water Fountains (WF), and Steam Cleaning (SC). The PP videos showed a pimple or blackhead that was opened to squeeze out the pus or sebum. The female participants (mean age: 24 years) were assigned to one of two groups: females who reported to enjoy watching PP (PPE_high; n = 38) and those with little enjoyment (PPE_low; n = 42). We analyzed brain activity in regions of interest (ROI) involved in the encoding of pleasure and aversion (e.g., nucleus accumbens (NAc), insula). ResultsThe PPE_high group showed less deactivation of the NAc (ROI finding), more frontopolar activation (whole-brain finding), and stronger accumbens-insula coupling than the PPE_low group. ConclusionsA specific pattern of brain activity and connectivity that involves the NAc and insula (coding of aversion/pleasure) and the frontopolar region (prediction of outcomes of motor decisions) is associated with the enjoyment of PP videos.