Studies in Historical Trauma and Transformation, Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch, South Africa.
Department of Psychiatry and MRC Unit on Risk & Resilience in Mental Disorders, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa.
Sci Rep. 2019 Sep 10;9(1):12959. doi: 10.1038/s41598-019-49298-4.
There is extensive evidence of an association between early adversity and enduring neural changes that impact socioemotional processing throughout life. Yet little is known about the effects of on-going social discrimination on socioemotional functioning. Here we examined how cumulative experiences of social discrimination impact brain response during empathic responding-a crucial issue in South Africa, given its historical apartheid context and continuing legacies. White and Black South Africans completed measures of social adversity (early adversity and social discrimination), and underwent fMRI while viewing video clips depicting victims and perpetrators of apartheid crimes. Increased neural response was detected in brain regions associated with cognitive rather than affective empathy, and greater social adversity was associated with reduced reported compassion across participants. Notably, social discrimination (due to income level, weight, gender) in White participants was associated with increased amygdala reactivity, whereas social discrimination (due to race) in Black participants mediated the negative associations of temporoparietal junction and inferior frontal gyrus activation with compassion during emotionally provocative conditions. These findings suggest that (i) social discrimination has comparable associations at the neural level as other psychosocial stressors, and that (ii) the mechanisms underlying empathic responding vary as a function of the type of social discrimination experienced.
大量证据表明，早期逆境与持久的神经变化之间存在关联，这些变化会影响整个生命周期的社会情感处理。然而，人们对于持续的社会歧视对社会情感功能的影响知之甚少。在这里，我们研究了社会歧视的累积经验如何影响同理心反应期间的大脑反应——鉴于南非的历史种族隔离背景和持续的遗产，这是一个至关重要的问题。白人和南非黑人完成了社会逆境（早期逆境和社会歧视）的测量，并在观看描述种族隔离犯罪的受害者和犯罪者的视频剪辑时接受了 fMRI 检查。在与认知同理心而非情感同理心相关的大脑区域中检测到了更强的神经反应，而参与者报告的同情心则随着社会逆境的增加而减少。值得注意的是，白人参与者因收入水平、体重和性别而遭受的社会歧视与杏仁核反应增加有关，而黑人参与者因种族而遭受的社会歧视则调节了颞顶联合区和下额前回激活与在情感激发条件下的同情心之间的负相关关系。这些发现表明：（i）社会歧视在神经层面上与其他社会心理压力源具有类似的关联，（ii）同理心反应的机制因所经历的社会歧视类型而异。
