Untitled

TITLE: Differential response in the human amygdala to racial outgroup vs ingroup face stimuli

JOURNAL: NeuroReport VOLUME: 11 ISSUE: 11 PAGES: 2351-2355

RECEIVED: 11 April 2000

ACCEPTED: 11 May 2000

AUTHOR: Allen J. Hart*, Paul J. Whalen~, Lisa M. Shin±, Sean C. McInerney§, Hakan Fischer¶, Scott L. Rauch**

ADDRESS: *Department of Psychology, Amherst College, Amherst, MA, USA; ~Departments of Psychiatry and Psychology, University of Wisconsin, 6001 Research Park Blvd., Madison, WI, USA; ±Department of Psychology, Tufts University, 490 Boston Ave., Medford, MA, USA; §Psychiatric Neuroimaging Research Group and Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Center, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, 13th St, Bldg. 149, Boston, MA, USA; ¶Uppsala University PET-centre, University Hospital, Uppsala, Sweden; **Psychiatric Neuroimaging Research Group and Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Center, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, 13th St, Bldg. 149, Boston, MA, USA

Here we describe response in the human amygdala to the presentation of racial outgroup vs ingroup faces. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) measures of brain activity were acquired while subjects who identified themselves as White or Black viewed photographs of both White and Black faces. Across all subjects, we observed significantly greater blood oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) signal in the amygdala to outgroup vs ingroup faces, but only during later stimulus presentations. A region of interest (ROI)-based analysis of these voxels revealed a significant interaction between amygdala response to outgroup and ingroup faces over time. Specifically, the greater amygdala activation to outgroup faces during later stimulus presentations was the result of amygdala response habituation to repeated presentations of ingroup faces with sustained responses to outgroup faces. The present results suggest that amygdala responses to human face stimuli are affected by the relationship between the perceived race of the stimulus face and that of the subject. Results are discussed as consistent with a role for the amygdala in encoding socially and/or biologically relevant information. We conclude that researchers seeking to study brain responses to face stimuli in human subjects should consider the relationship between the race of subjects and stimuli as a significant potential source of variance. Moreover, these data provide a foundation for future related studies in the neuroscience of social cognition and race. NeuroReport 11:2351-2355 © Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.

KEYWORDS: Amygdala, Brain, fMRI, Neuroimaging, Race, Social cognition

Brain loci and discrimination

The Journal of Neuroscience, April 1, 2002, 22(7):2730-2736 The Neural Correlates of Moral Sensitivity: A Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Investigation of Basic and Moral Emotions

Jorge Moll1, Ricardo de Oliveira-Souza1, Paul J. Eslinger2, Ivanei E. Bramati1, Janaína Mourão-Miranda1, 3, Pedro Angelo Andreiuolo1, and Luiz Pessoa4 1 Neuroimaging and Behavioral Neurology Group, Hospitais D'Or and LABS, RJ, 22281-081, Brazil, 2 Departments of Medicine (Division of Neurology), Pediatrics, and Behavioral Science, Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine, The Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, Hershey, Pennsylvania 17033, 3 Carlos Chagas Filho Biophysics Institute, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, 21941, Brazil, and 4 Laboratory of Brain and Cognition, National Institute of Mental Health, Bethesda, Maryland 20892 Humans are endowed with a natural sense of fairness that permeates social perceptions and interactions. This moral stance is so ubiquitous that we may not notice it as a fundamental component of daily decision making and in the workings of many legal, political, and social systems. Emotion plays a pivotal role in moral experience by assigning human values to events, objects, and actions. Although the brain correlates of basic emotions have been explored, the neural organization of "moral emotions" in the human brain remains poorly understood. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging and a passive visual task, we show that both basic and moral emotions activate the amygdala, thalamus, and upper midbrain. The orbital and medial prefrontal cortex and the superior temporal sulcus are also recruited by viewing scenes evocative of moral emotions. Our results indicate that the orbital and medial sectors of the prefrontal cortex and the superior temporal sulcus region, which are critical regions for social behavior and perception, play a central role in moral appraisals. We suggest that the automatic tagging of ordinary social events with moral values may be an important mechanism for implicit social behaviors in humans.