Peking-Tsinghua Center for Life Sciences, China; School of Psychological and Cognitive Sciences, PKU-IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Key Laboratory of Behavior and Mental Health, Peking University, Beijing, China.
School of Psychological and Cognitive Sciences, PKU-IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Key Laboratory of Behavior and Mental Health, Peking University, Beijing, China.
Neuropsychologia. 2019 Jun;129:302-309. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2019.04.008. Epub 2019 Apr 18.
Recent research has shown enhanced brain activity in responses to pain expression of same-race than other-race faces. However, due to the stimuli used in electctrophysiological (EEG) research (i.e., photos of static pain expressions) and low temporal resolutions of neural activity reported in functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies, it remains unclear how dynamic neural responses to subtle variations of pain expressions are shaped by perceived race in the first few hundreds of milliseconds after face onset. We tested the hypothesis of greater sensitivity to subtle variations of pain expressions of same-race than other-race faces by integrating psychophysical and EEG responses to increasing amount of pixels of pain expressions applied to neutral faces. Experiment 1 found that adults required fewer painful pixels to perceive pain expression of same-race than other-race faces. Experiment 2 showed that the amplitude of a positivity activity at 140-190 ms over the frontal/central electrodes (P2) increased faster in response to the increasing amount of painful pixels of same-race than other-race faces. These results provide evidence for enhanced sensitivity of both subjective feelings and neural responses pertaining to subtle variations of pain expressions of same-race than other-race faces.
最近的研究表明，与异族面孔相比，人们在看到同种族面孔的痛苦表情时，大脑活动会增强。然而，由于电生理学（EEG）研究中使用的刺激（即静态痛苦表情的照片）以及功能磁共振成像（MRI）研究中报告的神经活动的时间分辨率较低，因此仍不清楚在面孔出现后的最初几百毫秒内，对疼痛表情细微变化的动态神经反应如何受到感知种族的影响。我们通过整合对中性面孔施加的越来越多像素的疼痛表情的心理物理和 EEG 反应，来检验同种族面孔比异族面孔对疼痛表情细微变化更敏感的假设。实验 1 发现，成年人感知同种族面孔的疼痛表情所需的痛苦像素比感知异族面孔的要少。实验 2 表明，在额/中央电极（P2）上，140-190ms 时正性活动的振幅对同种族面孔比异族面孔的疼痛像素增加量的反应更快。这些结果为同种族面孔比异族面孔的疼痛表情细微变化的主观感觉和神经反应的敏感性增强提供了证据。
