Liu Yunzhe, Lin Wanjun, Xu Pengfei, Zhang Dandan, Luo Yuejia
State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning & IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China.
Institute of Affective and Social Neuroscience, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, China.
Hum Brain Mapp. 2015 Dec;36(12):5275-86. doi: 10.1002/hbm.23010. Epub 2015 Sep 29.
Worldwide racial prejudice is originated from in-group/out-group discrimination. This prejudice can bias face perception at the very beginning of social interaction. However, little is known about the neurocognitive mechanism underlying the influence of racial prejudice on facial emotion perception. Here, we examined the neural basis of disgust perception in racial prejudice using a passive viewing task and functional magnetic resonance imaging. We found that compared with the disgusted faces of in-groups, the disgusted faces of out-groups result in increased amygdala and insular engagement, positive coupling of the insula with amygdala-based emotional system, and negative coupling of the insula with anterior cingulate cortex (ACC)-based regulatory system. Furthermore, machine-learning algorithms revealed that the level of implicit racial prejudice could be predicted by functional couplings of the insula with both the amygdala and the ACC, which suggests that the insula is largely involved in racially biased disgust perception through two distinct neural circuits. In addition, individual difference in disgust sensitivity was found to be predictive of implicit racial prejudice. Taken together, our results suggest a crucial role of insula-centered circuits for disgust perception in racial prejudice.
全球范围内的种族偏见源于内群体/外群体歧视。这种偏见在社会互动之初就可能对面孔感知产生偏差。然而，关于种族偏见对面部情绪感知影响的神经认知机制却知之甚少。在此，我们使用被动观看任务和功能磁共振成像技术研究了种族偏见中厌恶感知的神经基础。我们发现，与内群体的厌恶面孔相比，外群体的厌恶面孔会导致杏仁核和脑岛的激活增加，脑岛与基于杏仁核的情绪系统呈正耦合，而脑岛与基于前扣带回皮质（ACC）的调节系统呈负耦合。此外，机器学习算法显示，脑岛与杏仁核和ACC的功能耦合能够预测内隐种族偏见的程度，这表明脑岛主要通过两条不同的神经回路参与了带有种族偏见的厌恶感知。此外，还发现厌恶敏感性的个体差异可预测内隐种族偏见。综上所述，我们的研究结果表明，以脑岛为中心的神经回路在种族偏见中的厌恶感知中起着关键作用。
