Oxytocin receptor gene and racial ingroup bias in empathy-related brain activity

The human brain responds more strongly to racial ingroup than outgroup individuals' pain. This racial ingroup bias varies across individuals and has been attributed to social experiences. What remains unknown is whether the racial ingroup bias in brain activity is associated with a genetic poly...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:NeuroImage (Orlando, Fla.) Fla.), 2015-04, Vol.110, p.22-31
Main Authors: Luo, Siyang, Li, Bingfeng, Ma, Yina, Zhang, Wenxia, Rao, Yi, Han, Shihui
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Asian Continental Ancestry Group
Behavior
Bias
Brain - physiology
Empathy
Empathy - physiology
European Continental Ancestry Group
Female
Genotype
Genotype & phenotype
Humans
Image Processing, Computer-Assisted
Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Male
Medical imaging
Neural networks
Nucleus Accumbens - metabolism
Pain
Pain - psychology
Photic Stimulation
Racism - psychology
Receptors, Oxytocin - genetics
Studies
Young Adult
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Summary:The human brain responds more strongly to racial ingroup than outgroup individuals' pain. This racial ingroup bias varies across individuals and has been attributed to social experiences. What remains unknown is whether the racial ingroup bias in brain activity is associated with a genetic polymorphism. We investigated genetic associations of racial ingroup bias in the brain activity to racial ingroup and outgroup faces that received painful or non-painful stimulations by scanning A/A and G/G homozygous of the oxytocin receptor gene polymorphism (OXTR rs53576) using functional MRI. We found that G/G compared to A/A individuals showed stronger activity in the anterior cingulate and supplementary motor area (ACC/SMA) in response to racial ingroup members' pain, whereas A/A relative to G/G individuals exhibited greater activity in the nucleus accumbens (NAcc) in response to racial outgroup members' pain. Moreover, the racial ingroup bias in ACC/SMA activity positively predicted participants' racial ingroup bias in implicit attitudes and NAcc activity to racial outgroup individuals' pain negatively predicted participants' motivations to reduce racial outgroup members' pain. Our results suggest that the two variants of OXTR rs53576 are associated with racial ingroup bias in brain activities that are linked to implicit attitude and altruistic motivation, respectively.
ISSN:1053-8119
1095-9572
DOI:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2015.01.042