Cultural influences on neural basis of inhibitory control

Narun Pornpattananangkul*, Ahmad R. Hariri, Tokiko Harada, Yoko Mano, Hidetsugu Komeda, Todd B. Parrish, Norihiro Sadato, Tetsuya Iidaka, Joan Y. Chiao

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

20 Scopus citations

Abstract

Research on neural basis of inhibitory control has been extensively conducted in various parts of the world. It is often implicitly assumed that neural basis of inhibitory control is universally similar across cultures. Here, we investigated the extent to which culture modulated inhibitory-control brain activity at both cultural-group and cultural-value levels of analysis. During fMRI scanning, participants from different cultural groups (including Caucasian-Americans and Japanese-Americans living in the United States and native Japanese living in Japan) performed a Go/No-Go task. They also completed behavioral surveys assessing cultural values of behavioral consistency, or the extent to which one's behaviors in daily life are consistent across situations. Across participants, the Go/No-Go task elicited stronger neural activity in several inhibitory-control areas, such as the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). Importantly, at the cultural-group level, we found variation in left IFG (L-IFG) activity that was explained by a cultural region where participants lived in (as opposed to race). Specifically, L-IFG activity was stronger for native Japanese compared to Caucasian- and Japanese-Americans, while there was no systematic difference in L-IFG activity between Japanese- and Caucasian-Americans. At the cultural-value level, we found that participants who valued being "themselves" across situations (i.e., having high endorsement of behavioral consistency) elicited stronger rostral ACC activity during the Go/No-Go task. Altogether, our findings provide novel insight into how culture modulates the neural basis of inhibitory control.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)114-126
Number of pages13
JournalNeuroimage
Volume139
DOIs
StatePublished - Oct 1 2016

Funding

We thank Paul Reber, Bobby Cheon, Lisa Hechtman, Christina Young, Nicolas Escoffier and Vivian Wang for helpful comments, Donna Bridge and Trixie Lipke for their assistance in data collection, and Jason Scimeca and Mark Schurgin for technical assistance. This work was funded in part by a Fulbright Open Competition Scholarship Program , and National Institutes of Health grant fellowship T32 NS047987 to N.P, National Institutes of Health grants AG049789 and DA03369 to A.R.H., the Grants-in Aid for Scientific Research S# 21220005 from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science and the “Development of biomarker candidates for social behavior” grant from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology grants 17100003 , 21220005 and 15H01846 to N.S. and the KAKENHI No. 20020011 and Nakayama Foundation for Human Science grants to T.I., National Science Foundation grants BCS-0720312 and BCS-0722326 and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Fellowship to J.Y.C.

Keywords

  • Action-monitoring
  • Anterior cingulate cortex
  • Behavioral consistency
  • Cultural neuroscience
  • Inferior frontal gyrus
  • Inhibitory control

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Neurology
  • Cognitive Neuroscience

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