title: Cultural specificity in amygdala response to fear faces.
abstract: The human amygdala robustly activates to fear faces. Heightened response to fear faces is thought to reflect the amygdala's adaptive function as an early warning mechanism. Although culture shapes several facets of emotional and social experience, including how fear is perceived and expressed to others, very little is known about how culture influences neural responses to fear stimuli. Here we show that the bilateral amygdala response to fear faces is modulated by culture. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to measure amygdala response to fear and nonfear faces in two distinct cultures. Native Japanese in Japan and Caucasians in the United States showed greater amygdala activation to fear expressed by members of their own cultural group. This finding provides novel and surprising evidence of cultural tuning in an automatic neural response.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208, USA. jchiao@northwestern.edu
authors.forename: Joan Y
authors.initials: JY
authors.lastname: Chiao
authors.forename: Tetsuya
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Iidaka
authors.forename: Heather L
authors.initials: HL
authors.lastname: Gordon
authors.forename: Junpei
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Nogawa
authors.forename: Moshe
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Bar
authors.forename: Elissa
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Aminoff
authors.forename: Norihiro
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Sadato
authors.forename: Nalini
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Ambady
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000679:Amygdala / Q000098:blood supply / Q000502:physiology*; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D003431:Cross-Cultural Comparison; D005145:Face; D005239:Fear / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D007839:Functional Laterality; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D010100:Oxygen / Q000097:blood; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D055815:Young Adult
chemical_list: D010100:Oxygen