RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Early Experience Shapes Amygdala Sensitivity to Race: An International Adoption Design
JF The Journal of Neuroscience
JO J. Neurosci.
FD Society for Neuroscience
SP 13484
OP 13488
DO 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1272-13.2013
VO 33
IS 33
A1 Eva H. Telzer
A1 Jessica Flannery
A1 Mor Shapiro
A1 Kathryn L. Humphreys
A1 Bonnie Goff
A1 Laurel Gabard-Durman
A1 Dylan D. Gee
A1 Nim Tottenham
YR 2013
UL http://www.jneurosci.org/content/33/33/13484.abstract
AB In the current study, we investigated how complete infant deprivation to out-group race impacts behavioral and neural sensitivity to race. Although monkey models have successfully achieved complete face deprivation in early life, this is typically impossible in human studies. We overcame this barrier by examining youths with exclusively homogenous racial experience in early postnatal development. These were youths raised in orphanage care in either East Asia or Eastern Europe as infants and later adopted by American families. The use of international adoption bolsters confidence of infant exposure to race (e.g., to solely Asian faces or European faces). Participants completed an emotional matching task during functional MRI. Our findings show that deprivation to other-race faces in infancy disrupts recognition of emotion and results in heightened amygdala response to out-group faces. Greater early deprivation (i.e., later age of adoption) is associated with greater biases to race. These data demonstrate how early social deprivation to race shapes amygdala function later in life and provides support that early postnatal development may represent a sensitive period for race perception.