On February 2, 2023, BJ Casey, the Christina L. Williams Professor of Neuroscience, published new research in the scientific journal Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience titled “Uncertain threat is associated with greater impulsive actions and neural dissimilarity to Black versus White faces.”
In this study, Casey examines implicit racial bias through a series of scientific experiments and analyses. Casey, along with the other scientists involved in this study, used representational similarity analysis to examine the neural representations of race information across functional brain networks between conditions of uncertainty. Participants — regardless of their race — showed greater impulsivity and neural dissimilarity in response to Black versus white faces across all functional brain networks in conditions of uncertain threat relative to other conditions. This pattern of greater neural dissimilarity under threat was enhanced in individuals with high implicit racial bias. Their results illustrate the distinct and important influence of uncertain threats on global differentiation in how race information is represented in the brain, which may contribute to racially biased behavior.