Amygdala Sensitivity to Race Is Not Present in Childhood but Emerges over Adolescence

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Neuroimaging research in adults has consistently found that differential perception of race is associated with increased amygdala activity. We hypothesized that such neural biases unlikely reflect innate processes but instead emerge over development. In the current study, we used fMRI to examine the neurodevelopmental trajectory of the amygdala in response to race across childhood and adolescence ranging from 4 to 16 years. Thirty-two youths viewed African American and European American faces during a functional brain scan. Results suggest that differential amygdala response to African American faces does not emerge until adolescence, reflecting the increasing salience of race across development. In addition, greater peer diversity was associated with attenuated amygdala response to African American faces, suggesting that intergroup racial contact may reduce the salience of race.

“Cultural norms and biases about race develop over the course of childhood and adolescence. When social groups are treated or labeled differently in childrenʼs environment, children learn that certain categories are salient (e.g., race), whereas others are not (e.g., handedness; Bigler & Liben, 2007). At a very young age, children learn that individuals can be sorted into social categories, such as race. For example, infants as young as 3–6 months can perceptually discriminate between racial groups (BarHaim, Ziv, Lamy, & Hodes, 2006), and preschool-aged children can accurately identify othersʼ racial group membership (Aboud, 2003). By 6 years, some children demonstrate implicit biases about race (Baron & Banaji, 2006), and by 10 years, children internalize the social and moral norms of their culture, demonstrating increased knowledge regarding racial stereotypes and cultural norms (Apfelbaum, Pauker, Ambady, Sommers, & Norton, 2008).

The amygdala is involved in processing of stimuli that have an acquired emotional significance based on previous experience and plays a role in sensitivity to the salience of environmental cues (Cunningham & Brosch, 2012; Santos, Mier, Kirsch, & Meyer-Lindenberg, 2011; Fitzgerald, Angstadt, Jelsone, Nathan, & Phan, 2006; Fudge & Emiliano, 2003; Whalen et al., 2001). Whereas brain regions such as the cerebellum respond to visual and perceptual differences in ones environment, such as shades of color (Claeys et al., 2003), the amygdala responds to emotionally salient stimuli (Cunningham & Brosch, 2012; Whalen et al., 2001). The amygdala responds to both negatively and positively valenced stimuli (Hennenlotter et al., 2005; Breiter et al., 1996), highlighting its role in learning about the emotional significance of the environment in general. Therefore, the amygdala is well positioned to acquire affective associations learned in the social environment, such as those associated with race. In addition to responding to emotionally salient stimuli based on experience, the amygdala is involved in fear-related learning, detecting and responding to threats, and encoding the hedonic value of learned and unlearned stimuli (Fanselow & Gale, 2003; LeDoux, 2003).” (p. 235)

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