OREANDA-NEWS Psychologists from California and Stanford universities have found out why people of a different race often seem outwardly identical to us. It turns out that at the first visual contact with people who look different, our brain does not perceive the physical differences between them. The work was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Researchers conducted an experiment with the participation of 17 representatives of the Caucasian race. Participants were alternately shown on the screen the faces of people of the Caucasian and Negroid races. At this time, scientists using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) monitored the changes that occur in their brain.

Researchers focused on the highly sensitive part of the visual cortex. This site is the first to receive impulses from the organs of vision and specializes in image processing of human faces.

The experiment showed that this part of the brain more successfully recognizes the differences in the faces of the race to which the person belongs. On the faces of members of a different race, it responds to a lesser extent.