"Paying taxes gives sexy feeling"

That's what the DomPost headline says. Truly.

Now a group of neuroscientists and economists at the University of Oregon, Eugene, has teamed up to get inside the heads of charitable citizens. The researchers recruited 19 female students and placed them in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machines to monitor the caudate nucleus and the nucleus accumbens, ancient regions of the brain, which produce feelings of pleasure and fulfillment. Each student participated in an economic game centered on charitable giving. They first received $100 in cold hard cash and were told any money left at the end of the study was theirs to keep. They then learned about a local food bank that would benefit from any donations from their account.

The volunteers then watched a screen as a computer program decided what to do with their money. Sometimes students could choose whether to give to the food bank. Other times, the computer "taxed" their account, donating money automatically to the food bank. And, once in a while, money would magically appear, either in their account or in the food bank's coffers.

Most subjects experienced the "warm glow" effect after voluntarily giving money, but some were also wired for pure altruism. In this latter group, the pleasure zones of volunteers' brains lit up when the food bank received money, even if the volunteers were being taxed. More surprisingly, when these subjects saw the computer randomly place money into the account of the food bank, they had a stronger positive reaction than when their own funds suddenly increased. And this big mental reward paid dividends to the food bank. Students exhibiting pure altruist behavior ponied up twice as much money as their "warm glow"-only counterparts, the team reports tomorrow in Science. The findings should surprise economists, says co-author Ulrich Mayr, as they indicate that some people care more about money going to the public good than to themselves.

Silly bints who know very little about why and how many people use foodbanks. When are they going to repeat the experiment on people (of both sexes) who live and work in the real world I wonder.