>From: ">To: "[log in to unmask]" <[log in to unmask]> >Subject: FW: What do you think when you look at... >Date: Thu, 7 Sep 2000 09:30:34 -0400 > > >-----Original Message----- >From: Wone, Al >Sent: Thursday, September 07, 2000 9:15 AM >To: CUNNINGHAM RONALD (spl1rdc) (E-mail); Thomas, Essa >Subject: FW: What do you think when you look at... > > >Interesting > > >-----Original Message----- >From: Almuatalib Hasan Numanlia Wone [mailto:[log in to unmask]] >Sent: Wednesday, September 06, 2000 10:04 PM >To: Undisclosed-Recipient:;@mindspring.com; >Subject: What do you think when you look at... > > > > > >Science >toolbar > ><http://ads.nytimes.com/RealMedia/ads/click_lx.ads/www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day >/science/05RACE.html/0/Top/default/empty.gif/616c6d756174616c696231> > > >September 5, 2000 > > > > > > <http://ea.nytimes.com/cgi-bin/email> E-mail This Article > > > > > >How, but Not Why, the Brain Distinguishes Race > > >By DAVID BERREBY > > > > _____ > > > > > > > >Fred LeBlanc for The New York Times (top); Frances Roberts for The New York >Times (above) > >Allen J. Hart, top, a social psychologist at Amherst College, and Prof. >Elizabeth A. Phelps, above, a neuroscientist at New York University, are >among the researchers studying what happens in the brain when it perceives >race. > > _____ > >Related Articles >• Do ><http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/science/082200sci-genetics-race.htm >l> Races Differ? Not Really, DNA Shows (August 22, 2000) >• How Race Is Lived <http://www.nytimes.com/race> in America >• Science/Health <http://www.nytimes.com/science> > > _____ > > > > > > > > > _____ > >fter a decade of mapping brains in tasks like recalling numbers, perceiving >facial expressions and using verbs, neuroscientists have recently homed in >on a much more controversial subject: the act of categorizing other human >beings. >In recently published papers, two separate teams of brain scanners joined >by >social psychologists describe how one particular part of the brain becomes >more active when people look at members of a different race. >Scientists involved in both studies emphasize that the work does not mean >racial differences are more scientifically real than, say, ghosts or >leprechauns — both of which would also produce measurable effects in the >brains of people who were scared of them. Nor are they surprised that >looking at people from a different race causes changes in the brain. >"Everything causes changes in the brain," said Dr. Elizabeth A. Phelps, a >neuroscientist at New York University. >But the two papers are the first published efforts to map exactly what >happens in the brain when it perceives a racial difference. It is the first >time neuroscientists have published papers on the kinds of messy questions >many prefer to leave to social psychologists and sociologists. >"What really stands out in this work is the union of social psychology, >neuroimaging and psychiatry," said Dr. Allen J. Hart, a social psychologist >at Amherst College who worked on one of the studies, which appeared in the >Aug. 3 issue of the journal NeuroReport. "Social psychologists have been >heading toward the study of emotions and group perception, and the imagers >have been heading toward mapping emotion. And now we've met." >Both teams — Dr. Hart and his colleagues, who used a magnetic resonance >imaging scanner at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, and a >Yale-N.Y.U. collaboration that used Yale's M.R.I. scanner — focused on the >amygdala, a well-studied cluster of nerves that lies deep inside each brain >hemisphere. Because of its involvement in strong emotions, memory and >learning rules, the amygdala is a promising target for research on how >perceptions of race could affect the brain, the researchers said. >Work on animals and people suggests the amygdala behaves like a spotlight, >calling attention to matters that are new, exciting and important to know >more about. "It's a learning area," said Dr. Paul Whalen, a neurobiologist >at the University of Wisconsin who was the amygdala expert on the >Massachusetts General study. >"It really seems to be about noticing," said Dr. Phelps, a co-author of the >Yale-N.Y.U. paper. "It's involved in grasping that something is emotionally >significant." >In the Mass General experiment, scientists placed four men (two who >described themselves as black and two who said they were white) and four >women (divided the same way by race) in an M.R.I. scanner. As they lay in >the tunnel, with the machine banging and clanging as its powerful magnets >shifted alignment, the volunteers saw photographs of black and white faces >flash by. >An M.R.I. device feeds magnetic signals into a computer, which turns them >into an image in which the parts of the brain with concentrations of >glucose >and oxygen — the fuel of brain-cell activity — are "lit up." The earliest >scans in the Mass General experiment showed the volunteers had nearly equal >amounts of amygdala activity no matter whose pictures were flashed. >That is not surprising, Dr. Whalen said, because in a novel setting "the >amygdala fires to everything at first." But after a short time had passed, >one set of pictures elicited more firing up than the other. White subjects >showed lower amounts of amygdala activity when they looked at white faces; >blacks showed less amygdala activity when they looked at blacks. >The study, the authors noted, did not look at other areas of the brain (the >amygdala is branched into many other regions). Nor did it link amygdala >activity to any particular behavior or prejudice. Indeed, after the tests, >the volunteers said they felt no strong emotions about the photographs, one >way or the other. >The other study, being published today in The Journal of Cognitive >Neuroscience, tried to address this by relating amygdala activity to >particular states of mind. Conceived by Dr. Phelps and Dr. Mahzarin R. >Banaji, a social psychologist at Yale, this experiment used only white >volunteers. They found that those whose amygdalas fired up most at the >sight >of blacks were those who scored higher on two other measures of unconscious >feelings about blacks. >The 14 volunteers in the Yale scanner saw pictures of young men of both >races. Days later, the researchers gave the volunteers two other tests to >measure their unconscious responses to blacks. >In one, the volunteers sat at computers and classified the photographs by >race at the same time as they classified words flashing on the screen as >either "good" or "bad." >When they take this "implicit association test," Dr. Banaji said, many >Americans (most whites and half of blacks) are measurably quicker to >associate positive words like joy, love and peace with whites and negative >words like cancer, bomb and devil with blacks. The responses are outside >conscious control, Dr. Banaji said. People whose conscious political >positions are egalitarian and antiracist are often upset to find that they, >too, were quicker to be positive about whites and negative about blacks. >True to Dr. Banaji's expectations, she said, most volunteers in this study >showed a preference for white faces over black. And those who showed the >most unconscious preference were those whose amygdalas showed the most >activity when they looked at black faces. >The Yale-N.Y.U. team also showed the photographs again to the volunteers >while electrodes measured how strongly the muscles around their eyes were >preparing to blink. Unconsciously preparing to blink is a response to >something alarming, and the amygdala is clearly on the circuit of brain >areas that creates the response, Dr. Phelps explained. >Knowing a volunteer's level of amygdala activity at the sight of black >faces, the team's paper says, also allowed them to predict how he would >score on the startle measure. "We didn't see the amygdala effect in >everybody, but when we did see it, we found we could make the prediction," >Dr. Phelps said. >In a second experiment, the N.Y.U.-Yale group showed a new batch of >volunteers a set of famous faces — including Joe Namath, Tom Cruise, Denzel >Washington and Michael Jordan. "We thought perhaps familiarity with a >person >would remove the effect," Dr. Phelps said. And, in fact, with famous faces, >the racial difference in amygdala reactions disappeared. >"Of course, it could also be an effect of fame, rather than just that these >faces were familiar," Dr. Phelps said. "We don't know." >In fact, authors of both papers emphasize that there is a lot they do not >know. Neuroimagers do not map the whole brain any more than tourists on a >tight schedule would visit every block in Manhattan. The scientists >concentrate on one landmark at a time, which leaves open many questions >about what is happening in the other parts of the brain to which the >amygdala has connecting fibers. >Beyond the uncertainty, neuroscientists interviewed about the two papers >were uncomfortable with issues like stereotype, prejudice and identity. But >they believed that those issues were relevant to their field. The reason, >several said, is that there is no such thing as "the brain." Each brain is >different, having been shaped by its environment. >A large part of a person's environment is other people. So one of the most >important ways that a brain is shaped is by experiencing how other brains >judge its owner. That deserves more attention than it has gotten, several >researchers said. For example, the NeuroReport paper notes that brain >scanners have generally used photos of white faces when they studied how >"the brain" reacts to "the face." If blacks respond differently to white >faces than do whites, that fact will have to be taken into account, the >authors write. >Until the recent work, "we in neuroimaging have attempted to minimize the >differences among people," said Dr. John Gabrieli, a brain researcher at >Stanford. "We have people do things like memorize nonsense words, as if we >could somehow get at pure thought, unmediated by the environment. It's not >clear to me why we've had many studies of things like short-term memory for >numbers before we had even one on the social influence of brain function." >With so many questions, the scientists hesitate to speculate about what the >amygdala work means. Among the theories, there is "bottom up" — the >amygdala, always seeking important information, notices a racial difference >and that perception then goes into the conscious thoughts. But there is >also >"top down" — racial thinking, picked up from other people, teaches the >amygdala that race is important to notice. >Very likely, Dr. Whalen says, the best explanation will have a bit of both >top and bottom in it. It could be that the mind is tuned to racial >difference in a way it is not to others, he speculated. At the same time, >he >said, "learning trumps everything else" in the life of the brain. For >example, he expects that the amygdala of a black person raised among whites >would "scan" like that of a white person. "It's not the color of the skin >of >the person in the magnet," he said. "It's what color the eyes are used to >seeing." >Despite their unease about venturing into what one journal recently called >"social neuroscience," none of the researchers doubts that the work will >continue. >"Everyone knows it's preliminary and impossible to interpret at this >point," >Dr. Whalen said of the studies. "But that doesn't make the answers any less >interesting." > > > > > <http://ea.nytimes.com/cgi-bin/email> E-mail This Article > > > > > > > > > ><http://ads.nytimes.com/RealMedia/ads/click_lx.ads/www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day >/science/05RACE.html/0/Bottom1/default/empty.gif/616c6d756174616c696231> ><http://ads.nytimes.com/RealMedia/ads/click_lx.ads/www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day >/science/05RACE.html/0/Bottom/default/empty.gif/616c6d756174616c696231> > _____ > >Home <http://www.nytimes.com/pages/index.html> | Site ><http://www.nytimes.com/info/contents/siteindex.html> Index | Site ><http://www.nytimes.com/search/daily/> Search | Forums ><http://www.nytimes.com/comment/> | Archives ><http://www.nytimes.com/archives/> | Marketplace ><http://www.nytimes.com/marketplace/> >Quick <http://www.nytimes.com/pages/quicknews/index.html> News | Page One ><http://www.nytimes.com/pages/pageone/index.html> Plus | International ><http://www.nytimes.com/pages/world/index.html> | National/N.Y. ><http://www.nytimes.com/pages/national/index.html> | Business ><http://www.nytimes.com/pages/business/index.html> | Technology ><http://www.nytimes.com/pages-technology/index.html> | Science ><http://www.nytimes.com/pages/science/index.html> | Sports ><http://www.nytimes.com/pages/sports/index.html> | Weather ><http://www.nytimes.com/partners/weather/> | Editorial ><http://www.nytimes.com/pages/editorial/index.html> | Op-Ed ><http://www.nytimes.com/pages/oped/index.html> | Arts ><http://www.nytimes.com/pages/arts/index.html> | Automobiles ><http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/auto/> | Books ><http://www.nytimes.com/books/yr/mo/day/home/> | Diversions ><http://www.nytimes.com/diversions/> | Job Market ><http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/jobmarket/> | Magazine ><http://www.nytimes.com/library/magazine/home/> | Real ><http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/realestate/> Estate | Travel ><http://www.nytimes.com/pages/travel/index.html> >Help/Feedback <http://www.nytimes.com/subscribe/help/> | Classifieds ><http://www.nytimes.com/classified/> | Services ><http://www.nytimes.com/info/contents/services.html> | New York Today ><http://www.nytoday.com/> >Copyright <http://www.nytimes.com/subscribe/help/copyright.html> 2000 The >New York Times Company > ><http://ads.nytimes.com/RealMedia/ads/click_lx.ads/www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day >/science/05RACE.html/0/Bottom4/default/empty.gif/616c6d756174616c696231> >Sincerely, > >Almuatalib Hasan Numanlia Wone >"Live each day as if you will live forever. Worship each day as if each >day >is your last" > >Global Community Enterprises >"A Stealth Company" >130 Wildwood Parkway, Suite 108-301 >Birmingham, Alabama 35209 >Email: [log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]> _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com.