Praise as good as cash to brain

clipped from www.reuters.com Paying people a compliment appears to activate the same reward center in the brain as paying them cash, Japanese researchers said "We found that these seemingly different kinds of rewards -- a good reputation versus money -- are biologically coded by the same neural structure, the striatum," In one set of experiments, people played a gambling game in which they were told one of three cards would yield a payout. The researchers then monitored the brain activity triggered when the subjects got a cash reward In a second set of experiments, people were told they were being evaluated by strangers based on information from a personality questionnaire and a video they had made The researchers then monitored reactions to these staged evaluations -- including when the subjects thought strangers had paid them a compliment