Cultural Neuroscience

Abstract

Cultural neuroscience issues from the apparently incompatible combination of neuroscience and cultural psychology. A brief literature sampling suggests, instead, several preliminary topics that demonstrate proof of possibilities: cultural differences in both lower-level processes (e.g. perception, number representation) and higher-order processes (e.g. inferring others' emotions, contemplating the self) are beginning to shed new light on both culture and cognition. Candidates for future cultural neuroscience research include cultural variations in the default (resting) network, which may be social; regulation and inhibition of feelings, thoughts, and actions; prejudice and dehumanization; and neural signatures of fundamental warmth and competence judgments.

Keywords: culture; emotion; neuroscience; perception; self; social cognition.

Figure 1

(Panel 1) Regions discussed in the section Perception. 1, superior parietal lobule; 2, supramarginal gyrus; 3, superior temporal gyrus; 4, middle temporal gyrus; 5, lateral occipital cortex; 6, parahippocampal gyrus (not actually shown—the parahippocampal gyrus is a fairly medial structure but is shown on the lateral surface of the brain in Panel 1 for display purposes). (Panel 2) Regions discussed in the section Attention. 1, inferior parietal lobule; 2, precentral gyrus. (Panel 3) Regions on the (a) lateral and (b) medial surfaces dis- cussed in the section Number. 1, superior parietal lobule; 2, premotor association area; 3, Broca’s area; 4, precuneus. (Panel 4) Regions discussed in the section Language. 1, dorsal region of inferior parietal lobule; 2, superior temporal gyrus; 3, inferior frontal gyrus. (Panel 5) Region discussed in the section Inferring others’ emotions. 1, amygdala (not actually shown—the amygdala is not a cortical region, but is shown on the lateral surface of the brain in this Panel for display purposes). (Panel 6) Regions on the (a) lateral and (b) medial surfaces discussed in the section Attribution and belief inference. 1, temporoparietal junction; 2, superior temporal sulcus; 3, medial prefrontal cortex; 4, orbitofrontal cortex. (Panel 7) Regions on the (a) lateral and (b) medial surfaces dis- cussed in the section The self. 1, right middle frontal cortex; 2, dorsomedial prefrontal cortex; 3, ventromedial prefrontal cortex; 4, anterior cingulate cortex; 5, posterior cingulate cortex.