TY - JOUR T1 - Motivation Modulates Brain Networks in Response to Faces Varying in Race and Status: A Multivariate Approach JF - eneuro JO - eNeuro DO - 10.1523/ENEURO.0039-18.2018 SP - ENEURO.0039-18.2018 AU - Bradley D. Mattan AU - Jennifer T. Kubota AU - Tianyi Li AU - Tzipporah P. Dang AU - Jasmin Cloutier Y1 - 2018/08/10 UR - http://www.eneuro.org/content/early/2018/08/10/ENEURO.0039-18.2018.abstract N2 - Previous behavioral and neuroimaging work indicates that individuals who are externally motivated to respond without racial prejudice tend not to spontaneously regulate their prejudice and prefer to focus on non-racial attributes when evaluating others. This fMRI multivariate analysis used Partial Least Squares (PLS) to examine the distributed neural processing of race and a relevant but ostensibly non-racial attribute (viz., socioeconomic status) as a function of the perceiver’s external motivation. Sixty-one White male participants (Homo sapiens) privately formed impressions of Black and White male faces ascribed with high or low status. Across all conditions, greater external motivation was associated with reduced co-activation of brain regions believed to support emotion regulation (rostral anterior cingulate cortex), introspection (middle cingulate), and social cognition (temporal pole, medial prefrontal cortex). The reduced involvement of this network irrespective of target race and status suggests that external motivation is related to the participant’s overall approach to impression formation in an interracial context. The findings highlight the importance of examining network co-activation in understanding the role of external motivation in impression formation, among other interracial social processes.Significance Statement This multivariate fMRI analysis examined distributed neural processing as participants formed impressions of faces varying in race and status. Across all conditions, participants reporting greater external motivation to respond without racial prejudice showed reduced co-activation in brain regions believed to support emotion regulation, introspection, and social cognition. These results suggest that external motivation may calibrate how perceivers form impressions in an interracial context, irrespective of target race. Results from this analysis raise new questions that may not have readily emerged in studies relying on traditional behavioral and univariate fMRI analyses. ER -