Brain responses differ to faces of mothers and fathers

The extended neural architecture of human attachment: An fMRI coordinate-based meta-analysis of affiliative studies

Functional imaging studies and clinical evidence indicate that cortical areas relevant to social cognition are closely integrated with evolutionarily conserved basal forebrain structures and neighboring regions, enabling human attachment and affiliative emotions. The neural circuitry of human affiliation is continually being unraveled as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) becomes increasingly prevalent, with studies examining human brain responses to various attachment figures. However, previous fMRI meta-analyses on affiliative stimuli have encountered challenges, such as low statistical power and the absence of robustness measures. To address these issues, we conducted an exhaustive coordinate-based meta-analysis of 79 fMRI studies, focusing on personalized affiliative stimuli, including one's infants, family, romantic partners, and friends. We employed complementary coordinate-based analyses (Activation Likelihood Estimation and Signed Differential Mapping) and conducted a robustness analysis of the results. Findings revealed cluster convergence in cortical and subcortical structures related to reward and motivation, salience detection, social bonding, and cognition. Our study thoroughly explores the neural correlates underpinning affiliative responses, effectively overcoming the limitations noted in previous meta-analyses. It provides an extensive view of the neural substrates associated with affiliative stimuli, illuminating the intricate interaction between cortical and subcortical regions. Our findings significantly contribute to understanding the neurobiology of human affiliation, expanding the known human attachment circuitry beyond the traditional basal forebrain regions observed in other mammals to include uniquely human isocortical structures.

Maintaining her image: A social comparative evaluation of the particularity of mothers in the Chinese cultural context

In Chinese culture, the mother holds a special meaning in one's self-concept, and is perceived as being stablyincorporated into and consistent with the self. However, it is unclear whether the evaluation of mothers by individuals is affected following the initiation of upward and downward social comparisons (USC and DSC). This experiment manipulated USC and DSC by evaluating positive and negative public figures and used functional near-infrared spectroscopy to record changes in brain activity during the evaluation. It was found that participants' evaluations of their mothers and their brain activity did not differ from the self during USC, verifying the equivalence of the mother and the self. In DSC, participants made significantly more positive social judgments about their mothers, accompanied by greater activation of the left temporal lobe. These results suggest that the mother was not only stably incorporated into the self but was in a position of even greater importance than the self. In DSC in particular, individuals are more likely to maintain a positive image of their mother.

Familiarity Facilitates Detection of Angry Expressions

Personal familiarity facilitates rapid and optimized detection of faces. In this study, we investigated whether familiarity associated with faces can also facilitate the detection of facial expressions. Models of face processing propose that face identity and face expression detection are mediated by distinct pathways. We used a visual search paradigm to assess if facial expressions of emotion (anger and happiness) were detected more rapidly when produced by familiar as compared to unfamiliar faces. We found that participants detected an angry expression 11% more accurately and 135 ms faster when produced by familiar as compared to unfamiliar faces while happy expressions were detected with equivalent accuracies and at equivalent speeds for familiar and unfamiliar faces. These results suggest that detectors in the visual system dedicated to processing features of angry expressions are optimized for familiar faces.

The Hierarchical Relationship Between the Relational-Self and the Collective-Self During Attention Processing

Background

Under the Chinese collectivist cultural system, people emphasize social connections with close others and members of in-groups. Collectivism can be divided into the following two forms: relational collectivism (privileges relational self [RS]) and group collectivism (emphasizes collective self [CS]). Previous researchers have found a hierarchy between the RS and CS, resulting in different degrees of recognition advantages. However, the hierarchy between the RS and CS is unclear and may depend on the specific processing stage. Therefore, this research compared the hierarchy between these two selves during different processing stages using an eye-movement method.

Methods

The sample consisted of thirty-eight young adults aged between 18 and 24 years old (M = 20.45, SD= 1.62). Each participant finished a dot-probe task featuring high-relevant (HR, ie one’s mother’s name and China) and low-relevant (LR, ie, name of a famous person and USA) information about the RS and CS and neutral information. Further, the eye-movement (EM) indices were collected simultaneously.

Results

A stronger reaction time bias and longer total gaze duration revealed that young people in China focus more on RS information, indicating that Chinese people prioritize the RS over the CS at late stages of attentional processing.

Conclusion

Information on interpersonal relationships and information on the in-group both catch people’s attention quickly and easily, but only RS information can maintain attention for longer. Understanding the hierarchy of the RS and the CS may provide more evidence for self-construal in the Chinese collectivist cultural context. The importance of the RS prompting that the interpersonal and close relationships are more important to the development of the self, suggesting that it is necessary to pay more attention to the impact of interpersonal support on people’s mental health in clinical applications.

Understanding identification-based trust in the light of affiliative bonding: Meta-analytic neuroimaging evidence

Trust is vital for establishing social relationships and is a crucial precursor for affiliative bonds. Investigations explored the neuropsychological bases of trust separately (e.g., measured by the trust game) and affiliative bonding (e.g., measured by parental care, pair-bonding, or friendship). However, direct empirical support for the shared neural mechanisms between trust and affiliative bonding is missing. Here, we conducted a coordinate-based meta-analysis on functional magnetic resonance imaging studies on interpersonal trust and affiliative bonding using the activation likelihood estimation method. Our results demonstrated that decisions to trust strangers in repeated interactions (i.e., identification-based trust) engaged the ventral striatum (vSTR, part of the mesolimbic dopaminergic pathway), likely signaling the reward anticipation. Further, both feedbacks in repeated interactions and affiliative bonding engaged the dorsal striatum (dSTR, part of the nigrostriatal dopaminergic pathway), likely encoding learning dynamics. Our findings suggest that identification-based trust can be understood in the light of affiliative bonding, involving the mesocorticolimbic "reward" pathway (vSTR) and nigrostriatal "habit formation" pathway (dSTR) in building and sustaining social relationships.

I know that voice! Mothers' voices influence children's perceptions of emotional intensity

The ability to interpret others' emotions is a critical skill for children's socioemotional functioning. Although research has emphasized facial emotion expressions, children are also constantly required to interpret vocal emotion expressed at or around them by individuals who are both familiar and unfamiliar to them. The current study examined how speaker familiarity, specific emotions, and the acoustic properties that comprise affective prosody influenced children's interpretations of emotional intensity. Participants were 51 7- and 8-year-olds presented with speech stimuli spoken in happy, angry, sad, and nonemotional prosodies by both each child's mother and another child's mother unfamiliar to the target child. Analyses indicated that children rated their own mothers as more intensely emotional compared with the unfamiliar mothers and that this effect was specific to angry and happy prosodies. Furthermore, the acoustic properties predicted children's emotional intensity ratings in different patterns for each emotion. The results are discussed in terms of the significance of the mother's voice in children's development of emotional understanding.

The neural influence of autobiographical memory related to the parent-child relationship on psychological health in adulthood

The recollection of childhood memories is affected by the subjects involved, such as father and mother, and by the context. This study aimed to clarify the neural influence of autobiographical memory related to the parent-child relationship on psychological health in adulthood. Twenty-nine healthy volunteers participated in a functional magnetic resonance imaging experiment using a childhood memory recollection task, in which they appraised the emotion a parent would have provided in a given situation. Whole-brain univariate and psychophysiological interaction analyses were performed. Neuroimaging results indicated notable involvement of the caudal anterior cingulate cortex and precuneus in autobiographical memory related to the parent-child relationship, and their activities were closely associated with the level of depression and self-esteem, respectively. The functional connectivity results indicated increased connectivity between the caudal anterior cingulate cortex and fusiform gyrus for the father-positive condition compared to the mother-positive condition and there was a positive correlation between the strength of connectivity between the two regions and the anxiety level. Our findings suggest the processing of negative affect and the personalness of autobiographical memories are distinctly engaged depending on the parent in question and the situational valence. The present study illuminates the impact of autobiographical memory processes on various dimensions of psychological health.

Poor inhibition of personally-relevant facial expressions of sadness and anger predicts an elevated cortisol response following awakening six months later

Failure to inhibit interference from distracting emotional stimuli may obstruct an individual's ability to regulate their behavioural and emotional responses to environmental stressors. Few studies have examined the longitudinal association between cognitive inhibition and regulation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA) in the natural environment. Seventy-nine healthy adults underwent two assessments 6 months apart. Participants' ability to suppress interference from distracting emotional stimuli was assessed using a negative affective priming task that included both generic and personally-relevant (i.e., participants' intimate partners) facial expressions of emotion. Poorer inhibition of personally-relevant sad and angry faces, but not generic stimuli, significantly predicted an increased cortisol awakening response (CAR) six months later. Moreover, poor inhibition of personally-relevant sad faces mediated the relation between chronic stress and an elevated CAR. Difficulties inhibiting personally-relevant emotional information may represent a key mechanism in understanding how environmental stress influences HPA functioning.

Gaming-addicted teens identify more with their cyber-self than their own self: Neural evidence

According to existing neuroimaging studies of social cognition, individuals use knowledge about themselves to infer the mental states of others and to mentalize in a different way when the other is perceived to be similar versus dissimilar to oneself. In this study, we examined whether adolescent boys make mental state inferences for their online game characters and whether adolescents who were diagnosed as addicted to the internet game perceived their personal game character to be similar to themselves. Twelve internet-addicted adolescents and fifteen adolescents without addiction reported whether short phrases described themselves, a well-known historical person, or their own game character while undergoing a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Different patterns of activity emerged for adolescents with internet game addiction compared to healthy adolescents when they were thinking about themselves, another person, and their game characters. Specifically, when addicted adolescents were thinking about their own game characters, more global and significant medial prefrontal (MPFC) and anterior cingulate (ACC) activations were observed, than even when compared to thinking about themselves. The ACC activation was correlated with the symptom severity. The activation patterns demonstrated that addicted adolescents were most attached to their game characters and equated their game characters to human.

Longitudinal relationships among depressive symptoms, cortisol, and brain atrophy in the neocortex and the hippocampus

OBJECTIVE

Depression is associated with accelerated aging and age-related diseases. However, mechanisms underlying this relationship remain unclear. The aim of this study was to longitudinally assess the link between depressive symptoms, brain atrophy, and cortisol levels.

METHOD

Participants from the Betula prospective cohort study (mean age = 59 years, SD = 13.4 years) underwent clinical, neuropsychological and brain 3T MRI assessments at baseline and a 4-year follow-up. Cortisol levels were measured at baseline in four saliva samples. Cortical and hippocampal atrophy rates were estimated and compared between participants with and without depressive symptoms (n = 81) and correlated with cortisol levels (n = 49).

RESULTS

Atrophy in the left superior frontal gyrus and right lingual gyrus developed in parallel with depressive symptoms, and in the left temporal pole, superior temporal cortex, and supramarginal cortex after the onset of depressive symptom. Depression-related atrophy was significantly associated with elevated cortisol levels. Elevated cortisol levels were also associated with widespread prefrontal, parietal, lateral, and medial temporal atrophy.

CONCLUSION

Depressive symptoms and elevated cortisol levels are associated with atrophy of the prefrontal and limbic areas of the brain.

Entrepreneurial and parental love-are they the same?

Here we tested the hypothesis that entrepreneurs' emotional experience and brain responses toward their own firm resemble those of parents toward their own children. Using fMRI, we measured the brain activity while male entrepreneurs viewed pictures of their own and of a familiar firm, and while fathers viewed pictures of their own and of a familiar child. The entrepreneurs who self-rated as being very closely attached with their venture showed a similar suppression of activity in the posterior cingulate cortex, temporoparietal junction, and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex as fathers during viewing pictures of their own children versus familiar children. In addition, individual differences in the confidence trait influenced the neural encoding of both paternal and entrepreneurial processing. For underconfident fathers, a picture of one's own child was associated with stronger activation and for overconfident fathers with weaker activation in the amygdala and in caudate nucleus, a brain structure associated with processing of rewards. Similar association with activation, yet more widespread in the emotional processing network, was observed in entrepreneurs suggesting a similar neural basis for increased sensitivity to threats and potential risks concerning one's venture and child. In conclusion, both entrepreneurial and parental love seem to be supported by brain structures associated with reward and emotional processing as well as social understanding. Hum Brain Mapp 38:2923-2938, 2017. © 2017 The Authors Human Brain Mapping Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Functional magnetic resonance imaging in awake transgenic fragile X rats: evidence of dysregulation in reward processing in the mesolimbic/habenular neural circuit

Anxiety and social deficits, often involving communication impairment, are fundamental clinical features of fragile X syndrome. There is growing evidence that dysregulation in reward processing is a contributing factor to the social deficits observed in many psychiatric disorders. Hence, we hypothesized that transgenic fragile X mental retardation 1 gene (fmr1) KO (FX) rats would display alterations in reward processing. To this end, awake control and FX rats were imaged for changes in blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) signal intensity in response to the odor of almond, a stimulus to elicit the innate reward response. Subjects were 'odor naive' to this evolutionarily conserved stimulus. The resulting changes in brain activity were registered to a three-dimensional segmented, annotated rat atlas delineating 171 brain regions. Both wild-type (WT) and FX rats showed robust brain activation to a rewarding almond odor, though FX rats showed an altered temporal pattern and tended to have a higher number of voxels with negative BOLD signal change from baseline. This pattern of greater negative BOLD was especially apparent in the Papez circuit, critical to emotional processing and the mesolimbic/habenular reward circuit. WT rats showed greater positive BOLD response in the supramammillary area, whereas FX rats showed greater positive BOLD response in the dorsal lateral striatum, and greater negative BOLD response in the retrosplenial cortices, the core of the accumbens and the lateral preoptic area. When tested in a freely behaving odor-investigation paradigm, FX rats failed to show the preference for almond odor which typifies WT rats. However, FX rats showed investigation profiles similar to WT when presented with social odors. These data speak to an altered processing of this highly salient novel odor in the FX phenotype and lend further support to the notion that altered reward systems in the brain may contribute to fragile X syndrome symptomology.

ACC and IPL networks in the perception of the faces of parents during selective tasks

The perception of the faces of parents is different from that of other faces. Mother's face perception is associated with childbearing and parenting and has specific cognitive processing properties. Yet, the underlying mechanism remains unknown. We investigated the neural network that is involved in the perception of parent's face based upon parental face selective tasks that were completed by 23 normal adults. Resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and a task block design with fixation cross sign control fMRI were used. The faces activated the right inferior frontal gyrus, the left and right middle frontal gyri, and the left and right inferior parietal lobule. In addition, the parental faces task resulted in more activation than the control tasks in the left and right anterior cingulate, left middle (superior) temporal gyrus, right and left inferior frontal gyrus. The anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and the inferior parietal lobe (IPL) are central nodes of the brain network, while the parental face perception network includes the anterior cingulate cortex and superior temporal gyrus (ACC-STG)/parahippocampal network as well as the inferior frontal and inferior parietal lobule (IFG-IPL) network. The network of father's face perception involves the left inferior parietal lobule and left middle frontal gyrus/right middle frontal gyrus/right inferior frontal gyrus, while mother's face perception involves the right inferior parietal lobe and frontal network (MFG.L/IFG.R). The experiments showed that the ACC-STG/parahippocampal network and IFG-IPL network are neural networks used in parental face perception, and the ACC and IPL are central nodes in the network. The neural pathway of parental face perception is similar to the perception of a stranger's face, as both include the STG, but is different in that the perception of the stranger's face involves a connected STG and IPL as a specific neural pathway.

Attachment affects social information processing: Specific electrophysiological effects of maternal stimuli

Attachment is critical to each individual. It affects the cognitive-affective processing of social information. The present study examines how attachment affects the processing of social information, specifically maternal information. We assessed the behavioral and electrophysiological responses to maternal information (compared to non-specific others) in a Go/No-go Association Task (GNAT) with 22 participants. The results illustrated that attachment affected maternal information processing during three sequential stages of information processing. First, attachment affected visual perception, reflected by enhanced P100 and N170 elicited by maternal information as compared to others information. Second, compared to others, mother obtained more attentional resources, reflected by faster behavioral response to maternal information and larger P200 and P300. Finally, mother was evaluated positively, reflected by shorter P300 latency in a mother + good condition as compared to a mother + bad condition. These findings indicated that the processing of attachment-relevant information is neurologically differentiated from other types of social information from an early stage of perceptual processing to late high-level processing.

Perception of global facial geometry is modulated through experience

Identification of personally familiar faces is highly efficient across various viewing conditions. While the presence of robust facial representations stored in memory is considered to aid this process, the mechanisms underlying invariant identification remain unclear. Two experiments tested the hypothesis that facial representations stored in memory are associated with differential perceptual processing of the overall facial geometry. Subjects who were personally familiar or unfamiliar with the identities presented discriminated between stimuli whose overall facial geometry had been manipulated to maintain or alter the original facial configuration (see Barton, Zhao & Keenan, 2003). The results demonstrate that familiarity gives rise to more efficient processing of global facial geometry, and are interpreted in terms of increased holistic processing of facial information that is maintained across viewing distances.

Inhibition of personally-relevant angry faces moderates the effect of empathy on interpersonal functioning

While empathy is typically assumed to promote effective social interactions, it can sometimes be detrimental when it is unrestrained and overgeneralized. The present study explored whether cognitive inhibition would moderate the effect of empathy on social functioning. Eighty healthy young adults underwent two assessments six months apart. Participants’ ability to suppress interference from distracting emotional stimuli was assessed using a Negative Affective Priming Task that included both generic and personally-relevant (i.e., participants’ intimate partners) facial expressions of emotion. The UCLA Life Stress Interview and Empathy Quotient were administered to measure interpersonal functioning and empathy respectively. Multilevel modeling demonstrated that higher empathy was associated with worse concurrent interpersonal outcomes for individuals who showed weak inhibition of the personally-relevant depictions of anger. The effect of empathy on social functioning might be dependent on individuals’ ability to suppress interference from meaningful emotional distractors in their environment.

Differential Processing of Vertical Interfeature Relations Due to Real-Life Experience with Personally Familiar Faces

Identification of personally familiar faces is possibly the most complex and likewise efficient task achieved by the human visual system, yet to date the mechanisms underlying this extreme proficiency remain largely unknown. Building on empirical evidence from unfamiliar face processing in healthy populations and neuropsychological patients, the present work aimed to determine the type of information processed differently due to repeated, real-life experience with faces. A modulatory effect of familiarity was observed for processing of vertical interfeature distances, which have been suggested to rely on holistic processing skills. Contrariwise, no such effect was found for processing of information that can be discriminated locally (ie featural cues, interocular distances). The results indicate that familiarity-related advantages in face processing may arise from more efficient, or increased, holistic processing.

The neural response to maternal stimuli: an ERP study

Mothers are important to all humans. Research has established that maternal information affects individuals' cognition, emotion, and behavior. We measured event-related potentials (ERPs) to examine attentional and evaluative processing of maternal stimuli while participants completed a Go/No-go Association Task that paired mother or others words with good or bad evaluative words. Behavioral data showed that participants responded faster to mother words paired with good than the mother words paired with bad but showed no difference in response to these others across conditions, reflecting a positive evaluation of mother. ERPs showed larger P200 and N200 in response to mother than in response to others, suggesting that mother attracted more attention than others. In the subsequent time window, mother in the mother + bad condition elicited a later and larger late positive potential (LPP) than it did in the mother + good condition, but this was not true for others, also suggesting a positive evaluation of mother. These results suggest that people differentiate mother from others during initial attentional stage, and evaluative mother positively during later stage.

Asymmetric correlation between experienced parental attachment and event-related potentials evoked in response to parental faces

This study aims to explore the modulation effects of attachment relationships with parents on the neural correlates that are associated with parental faces. The event-related potentials elicited in 31 college students while viewing facial stimuli of their parents in two single oddball paradigms (father vs. unfamiliar male and mother vs. unfamiliar female) were measured. We found that enhanced P3a and P3b and attenuated N2b were elicited by parental faces; however, the N170 component failed to discriminate parental faces from unfamiliar faces. An experienced attachment relationship with the father was positively correlated to the P3a response associated with the father's face, whereas no correlation was found in the case of mothers. Further exploration in dipole source localization showed that, within the time window of the P300, distinctive brain regions were involved in the processing of parental faces; the father's face was located in the medial frontal gyrus, which might be involved in self effect, and the anterior cingulate gyrus was activated in response to the mother's face. This research is the first to demonstrate that neural mechanisms involved with parents can be modulated differentially by the qualities of the attachments to the parents. In addition, parental faces share a highly similar temporal pattern, but the origins of these neural responses are distinct, which could merit further investigation.

Art appreciation and aesthetic feeling as objects of explanation

The target article presents a thought-provoking approach to the relation of neuroscience and art. However, at least two issues pose potential difficulties. The first concerns whether "art appreciation" is a coherent topic for scientific study. The second concerns the degree to which processing fluency can explain aesthetic feeling or may simply be one component of a more complex account.

Anterior temporal face patches: a meta-analysis and empirical study

Evidence suggests the anterior temporal lobe (ATL) plays an important role in person identification and memory. In humans, neuroimaging studies of person memory report consistent activations in the ATL to famous and personally familiar faces and studies of patients report resection or damage of the ATL causes an associative prosopagnosia in which face perception is intact but face memory is compromised. In addition, high-resolution fMRI studies of non-human primates and electrophysiological studies of humans also suggest regions of the ventral ATL are sensitive to novel faces. The current study extends previous findings by investigating whether similar subregions in the dorsal, ventral, lateral, or polar aspects of the ATL are sensitive to personally familiar, famous, and novel faces. We present the results of two studies of person memory: a meta-analysis of existing fMRI studies and an empirical fMRI study using optimized imaging parameters. Both studies showed left-lateralized ATL activations to familiar individuals while novel faces activated the right ATL. Activations to famous faces were quite ventral, similar to what has been reported in previous high-resolution fMRI studies of non-human primates. These findings suggest that face memory-sensitive patches in the human ATL are in the ventral/polar ATL.

Social cognition and the anterior temporal lobes: a review and theoretical framework

Memory for people and their relationships, along with memory for social language and social behaviors, constitutes a specific type of semantic memory termed social knowledge. This review focuses on how and where social knowledge is represented in the brain. We propose that portions of the anterior temporal lobe (ATL) play a critical role in representing and retrieving social knowledge. This includes memory about people, their names and biographies and more abstract forms of social memory such as memory for traits and social concepts. This hypothesis is based on the convergence of several lines of research including anatomical findings, lesion evidence from both humans and non-human primates and neuroimaging evidence. Moreover, the ATL is closely interconnected with cortical nuclei of the amygdala and orbitofrontal cortex via the uncinate fasciculus. We propose that this pattern of connectivity underlies the function of the ATL in encoding and storing emotionally tagged knowledge that is used to guide orbitofrontal-based decision processes.

Amygdala response to mother

In altricial species, like the human, the caregiver, very often the mother, is one of the most potent stimuli during development. The distinction between mothers and other adults is learned early in life and results in numerous behaviors in the child, most notably mother-approach and stranger wariness. The current study examined the influence of the maternal stimulus on amygdala activity and related circuitry in 25 developing children (n = 13) and adolescents (n = 12), and how this circuitry was associated with attachment-related behaviors. Results indicated that maternal stimuli were especially effective in recruiting activity in the left dorsal amygdala, and activity in this amygdala region showed increased functional connectivity with evaluative and motor regions during viewing of maternal stimuli. Increases in this left dorsal amygdala activity and related amygdala-cortical functional connectivity were associated with increased mother-approach behaviors as measured by in-scanner behavioral responding and out-of-scanner child-report. Moreover, age-related changes in amygdala activity to strangers statistically mediated the developmentally typical decline in stranger wariness seen across this period. These results suggest that mother-induced behaviors are enacted by maternal influence on amygdala-cortical circuitry during childhood and adolescence.

The centre of the brain: topographical model of motor, cognitive, affective, and somatosensory functions of the basal ganglia

The basal ganglia have traditionally been viewed as motor processing nuclei; however, functional neuroimaging evidence has implicated these structures in more complex cognitive and affective processes that are fundamental for a range of human activities. Using quantitative meta-analysis methods we assessed the functional subdivisions of basal ganglia nuclei in relation to motor (body and eye movements), cognitive (working-memory and executive), affective (emotion and reward) and somatosensory functions in healthy participants. We document affective processes in the anterior parts of the caudate head with the most overlap within the left hemisphere. Cognitive processes showed the most widespread response, whereas motor processes occupied more central structures. On the basis of these demonstrated functional roles of the basal ganglia, we provide a new comprehensive topographical model of these nuclei and insight into how they are linked to a wide range of behaviors.

Implicit attitudes in prosopagnosia

We studied a male with acquired prosopagnosia using a battery of Implicit Association Tests (IATs) to investigate whether observing faces varying by social category would activate the patient's implicit social biases. We also asked him to categorize faces explicitly by race, gender, and political party. The patient, G.B., was marginally slower to categorize black compared to white faces. He showed congruency effects in the race and celebrity IATs, but not in the gender or political IATs. These results indicate that G.B. possesses an implicit social sensitivity to certain facial stimuli despite an inability to overtly recognize familiar faces. The results demonstrate that social biases can be retrieved based on facial stimuli via pathways bypassing the fusiform gyri. Thus the IAT effect can be added to the list of covert recognition effects found in prosopagnosia.