TY - JOUR
T1 - Race modulates neural activity during imitation
AU - Losin, Elizabeth A.Reynolds
AU - Iacoboni, Marco
AU - Martin, Alia
AU - Cross, Katy A.
AU - Dapretto, Mirella
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank Kathleen Quach, Drew Morton and Kambria Nguyen and Zarrar Shehzad for their helpful assistance in data collection and analysis and Neil Losin for his helpful discussions and comments on the manuscript. For generous support the authors also wish to thank National Science Foundation Graduate Research fellowship and NIH T90 DA02276 , which supported the first author while conducting the research. The project described was supported by a research grant from the FPR-UCLA Center for Culture Brain and Development , and grants made to the UCLA Ahmanson-Lovelace Brain Mapping Center including grant Numbers RR12169, RR13642 and RR00865 from the National Center for Research Resources (NCRR), a component of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), The Brain Mapping Medical Research Organization , Brain Mapping Support Foundation , Pierson-Lovelace Foundation , The Ahmanson Foundation , William M. and Linda R. Dietel Philanthropic Fund at the Northern Piedmont Community Foundation , Tamkin Foundation , Jennifer Jones-Simon Foundation , Capital Group Companies Charitable Foundation , Robson Family and Northstar Fund .
PY - 2012/2/15
Y1 - 2012/2/15
N2 - Imitation plays a central role in the acquisition of culture. People preferentially imitate others who are self-similar, prestigious or successful. Because race can indicate a person's self-similarity or status, race influences whom people imitate. Prior studies of the neural underpinnings of imitation have not considered the effects of race. Here we measured neural activity with fMRI while European American participants imitated meaningless gestures performed by actors of their own race, and two racial outgroups, African American, and Chinese American. Participants also passively observed the actions of these actors and their portraits. Frontal, parietal and occipital areas were differentially activated while participants imitated actors of different races. More activity was present when imitating African Americans than the other racial groups, perhaps reflecting participants' reported lack of experience with and negative attitudes towards this group, or the group's lower perceived social status. This pattern of neural activity was not found when participants passively observed the gestures of the actors or simply looked at their faces. Instead, during face-viewing neural responses were overall greater for own-race individuals, consistent with prior race perception studies not involving imitation. Our findings represent a first step in elucidating neural mechanisms involved in cultural learning, a process that influences almost every aspect of our lives but has thus far received little neuroscientific study.
AB - Imitation plays a central role in the acquisition of culture. People preferentially imitate others who are self-similar, prestigious or successful. Because race can indicate a person's self-similarity or status, race influences whom people imitate. Prior studies of the neural underpinnings of imitation have not considered the effects of race. Here we measured neural activity with fMRI while European American participants imitated meaningless gestures performed by actors of their own race, and two racial outgroups, African American, and Chinese American. Participants also passively observed the actions of these actors and their portraits. Frontal, parietal and occipital areas were differentially activated while participants imitated actors of different races. More activity was present when imitating African Americans than the other racial groups, perhaps reflecting participants' reported lack of experience with and negative attitudes towards this group, or the group's lower perceived social status. This pattern of neural activity was not found when participants passively observed the gestures of the actors or simply looked at their faces. Instead, during face-viewing neural responses were overall greater for own-race individuals, consistent with prior race perception studies not involving imitation. Our findings represent a first step in elucidating neural mechanisms involved in cultural learning, a process that influences almost every aspect of our lives but has thus far received little neuroscientific study.
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U2 - 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2011.10.074
DO - 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2011.10.074
M3 - Article
C2 - 22062193
AN - SCOPUS:84855171242
SN - 1053-8119
VL - 59
SP - 3594
EP - 3603
JO - NeuroImage
JF - NeuroImage
IS - 4
ER -