Shared and culture-specific brain networks for emotional facial discrimination: Evidence from predictive modeling

Whether emotional facial expressions are perceived universally or are culture-specific has been a topic of debate in affective neuroscience. To address this, we employed connectome-based predictive modeling (CPM) to analyse whole-brain connectivity data from an emotional face discrimination task, examining cultural influences on emotional facial perception in White Americans and Han Chinese. We demonstrated that individual differences in emotional facial discrimination could be predicted in both groups. However, there was limited overlap in the network predictors between groups, with the motor regions, inferior semi-lunar lobule, and culmen emerging as shared hubs at both the network and node levels. Group-specific patterns were also observed. In the Chinese group, unique predictive nodes included the inferior occipital gyrus, cingulate gyrus, and cerebellar tonsil, with dominant contributions arising from cerebellar-motor interactions. In contrast, the White American group showed distinct involvement of the superior temporal gyrus, nodule, and culmen, with primary predictive contributions driven by the motor network. Notably, the predictive model trained on White Americans showed success in generalizing to Han Chinese individuals, whereas the reverse was not observed. These differences may reflect cultural differences in the functional relevance of core predictive networks. Classification analyses validated the functional importance of CPM-identified nodes, showing that activity in these regions distinguished cultural groups in their responses to emotional faces and baseline conditions. These findings offer unique insights into the neural mechanisms by which culture influences emotional facial perception, underscoring the importance of predictive modeling in cultural neuroscience.