It's easier to recognise a face when its owner's race matches our own, is the controversial finding of a new study. An imaging study shows that greater activity in the brain's expert 'face-discrimination area' may explain this phenomenon -- one of the first times that a social group's effects on behaviour have been pinned on a brain centre. "We were able to pinpoint where and when race matters at a neural level," says Jennifer Eberhardt, researcher at the Stanford University, California, USA. She and her colleagues recorded activity in the fusiform face area (FFA) of the brain as African, European and US citizens studied pictures of faces from different races. The FFA was more active when either group was recognising faces of the same race they belong to.
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