Recent News
New findings, awards, and other accomplishments of NYU Social Neuroscience faculty, student, and post-doctoral affiliates.
May
1
2013
Dr. David Amodio's work featured on Public Radio International
This piece discusses how the biological effects of stress associated with low socio-economic status may be mitigated by ingroup pride and other protective, social factors.
Full Information
February
5
2013
Kaul, Ratner, and Van Bavel's paper "Dynamic representations of race: processing goals shape race decoding in the fusiform gyri" published at Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience
This paper follows up an earlier publication by the authors that used multivariate pattern analysis to show that skin color is represented by the fusiform gyri even when group membership is orthogonal to race. The current findings demonstrate that, ironically, race is represented in the fusiform gyri to a greater extent when people are categorized according to these group memberships than when they are categorized by skin color. The results from this new study suggest that race is dynamically represented in the visual stream according to the processing goals of the perceiver.
Full Information
October
22
2012
September
4
2012
Dr. Jay Van Bavel receives the Early Career Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions to Social Neuroscience from the Society for Social Neuroscience
This prize is awarded to “the most creative and promising investigators in the field of social neuroscience” who “will embody the future of social neuroscience through their cutting edge ideas and novel research.”
Full Information
August
28
2012
August
22
2012
Ratner & Kubota's commentary published in Frontiers of Human Neuroscience: "Genetic Contributions to Intergroup Responses: A Cautionary Perspective"
In this commentary, Ratner and Kubota stitch together human and animal neuroscience with insight from molecular biology to posit mechanisms through which genetic variation and life experience may give rise to responses during intergroup situations. The researchers then discuss avenues for empirical investigation and urge for responsible research practices that take into consideration the negative societal consequences that can result from overinterpreting genetic data.
Full Information
June
26
2012
Kubota, Banaji, and Phelps’ review paper “The Neuroscience of Race” published in Nature Neuroscience.
In this article, Kubota, Banaji, and Phelps review over 17 functional magnetic resonance imaging studies on race that reflect the culmination of work by over 70 researchers. When summarizing this literature, we find that there is a network of interacting brain regions that are important in the unintentional, implicit expression of racial attitudes and its control. This network overlaps with the circuits involved in decision-making and emotion regulation, and includes the amygdala, fusiform face area (FFA), anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC). The goal was to integrate the modest but growing fMRI research on race with the aim of characterizing what the results mean about intergroup perception, how these findings may link to real-world decision-making and potential prospects for social change.
Full Information
June
3
2012
Chronicle of Higher Education discusses social neuroscience work of John Jost and other researchers
“Scientists Look to Genetics of Behavior for Answers to Country’s Partisan Divide”
Full Information
June
1
2012
Ratner, Kaul, and Van Bavel's paper "Is race erased? Decoding race from patterns of neural activity when skin color is not diagnostic of group boundaries" published at Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience
This paper uses multivariate pattern analysis to examine an fMRI dataset that was collected while participants assigned to mixed-race groups categorized own-race and other-race faces as belonging to their newly assigned group. The results suggest that patterns of activation within specific regions of the visual cortex may represent race even when overall activation in these regions is not driven by racial information.
Full Information
To read the paper go to: http://bit.ly/Lec89M
Email: jay.vanbavel@nyu.edu
April
30
2012
Cunningham, Van Bavel, Arbuckle, Packer, and Waggoner's paper published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience:
"Rapid social perception is flexible: approach and avoidance motivational states shape P100 responses to other-race faces"
In this paper, Cunningham, Van Bavel and colleagues demonstrate that racial biases in perception are not inevitable, but can be shaped by motivational states. Past work has found that early perceptual processing is heightened for own-race faces compared to other-race faces. However, in the present study, the researchers manipulated approach/avoidance motivations by having participants respond by either pulling or pushing a joystick, while viewing Black and White faces and undergoing EEG (eletroencephalography). Results revealed that approaching the other-race faces attenuated the racial biases in early perceptual processing, as indexed by the P100 ERP component, suggesting that rapid aspects of social perception may be more flexible than previously thought.
Full Information
April
17
2012
Dr. Elizabeth Phelps elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Professor of Psychology and Neural Science Elizabeth Phelps was one of eight NYU faculty elected to join the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The current membership includes over 250 Nobel Laureates and 60 Pulitzer Prize winners.
Full Information
For the full list of newly elected members, click here.
Email:
January
22
2012
September
7
2011
Amodio, Jost, and colleagues' paper on the neural correlates of political ideology featured on Discover Magazine Blog:
In a post entitled, “Your Brain on Politics: the Cognitive Neuroscience of Liberals and Conservatives,” Discovery Magazine explains the findings of Amodio et al’s ERP study, published in Nature Neuroscience (2007). The blog (and the ensuing discussion in the comments) discusses the possible implications of the striking finding that liberals exhibit greater activity in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), a brain region associated with conflict monitoring and control, compared to conservatives.
Full Information
September
1
2011
Prof. Jennifer Beer visitor in NYU Psychology Dept this Fall
Jennifer Beer, Assistant Professor at the University of Texas at Austin, will be visiting the NYU Psychology Department this Fall semester. Beer’s work focuses on self-perception, emotion processes and social cognition, using both behavioral and neuroscience methods.
Full Information
May
13
2011
Kubota & Senholzi paper published at Frontiers in Human Neuroscience:
Knowing you beyond race: the importance of individual feature encoding in the other-race effect
This article is a commentary on Lucas, Chaio, & Paller recently published manuscript entitled “Why some faces won’t be remembered: brain potentials illuminate successful versus unsuccessful encoding for same-race and other-race faces”. This commentary gives an overview of research in the area of other-race face perception and discusses future directions for the field.
Full Information
May
3
2011