User:Nlubin12/sandbox

"Article Evaluation"


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I plan to contribute a larger explanation of neuroanthropology. Also, I plan to provide at least one in depth explanation into how one explanation of culture contributed to hum an brain growth and evolution.

From  The brain in culture and culture in the brain: a review of core issues in neuroanthropology: 

There are two forms of enculturation: culture built by the brain and cultures effect on the brain. The former deals with the neural and cognitive mechanisms of building culture while the latter relates how the culture alters the brain structure.

These ideas of culture are built by the brain: We impart significant meaning to things in order to create culture because of the prefrontal cortex. The prefrontal cortex does this by taking in information and categorizing it to then relate it to other pieces of information. Anthropologically, culture can be defined as the understanding of symbolic meaning shared between people. This mutual understanding is built individually among people and starts out rather simple. It begins with a small number of cultural elements with relatively little meaning and isolated applications. These elements then grow in complexity to include a greater number of them with greater hierarchical depth and more linkages to other objects or events. This process is called abductive inference. When individuals interact with objects their individual abduction builds information. Groups of people then take the information to build a shared context to understand one another. By growing a shared context people form more logical inferences as to the best meaning for any particular observation or object.

This is now the idea of cultures effect on the brain. The most important discovery is that the entire brain, including the prefrontal cortex, reacts to cultural experiences. That is to say that the culture builds patterns of neuronal activity so as to alter the structure of the brain.

In summary, the prefrontal cortex takes objects and events from specific areas of the brain and forms connections between them. This forms the building blocks of culture. By building the connections, the areas of the brain, including the prefrontal cortex, can create new ideas and modify them as a result of cultural experiences.

From The cultural neuroscience of person perception:

fMRI analysis of Cultural Impact on nonsocial preception

Western and East Asian cultures differ in their norms and practices such that they likely alter the brain’s perception. Western culture tends to stress individualism and independent attainment, while East Asian culture focuses on collectivism and relationships. The result of the different societies is two unique methods of thinking. In addition to affecting cognition, the two cultures also alter one's visual perception of their environment. More specifically, the norms and practices of Western culture isolate objects from their environmental context to analytically think about the individual item. This differs from the norms and practice of East Asian culture, which involve the relationship or interdependence between an object and its environmental context. As a result of this culture, East Asians would likely focus on the interdependent nature of an object and its surroundings while Westerners would tend to center their attention on the object and how it relates to them. To summarise, East Asians would focus on the interrelatedness between a stimulus and its context, but Westerners would focus on the independence of the object and its relationship to themselves.

Many studies have found this pattern to be true and one of the simplest experiments is the framed-line test. The results of it show that Americans pay attention to an object independent of its environment, while Japanese focus attention on the environment and interrelated objects. Hedden et al. used a modified framed-line test in conjunction with fMRI to determine if there were any physiological differences in subjects brains as a result of the cultural differences. They found that when Americans were asked to make more relative judgments and when East Asians to make absolute judgments, both stimulated similar areas of the brain. When either cultures' nonpreferred judgment was provoked the result was the same for both groups. “The frontal and parietal lobes, specifically the left inferior parietal lobe and the right precentral gyrus were more stimulated than when culturally preferred judgments were made.” Thus, a person's societal culture determines how activated this neural network becomes when making visual perceptions. Plus, the degree of activation depends on how deep one’s cultural background is. As a result of the differences between Western and East Asian cultures, different neural patterns are activated in the brain depending on particular environmental circumstances. Clearly, culture affects the activity of the brain’s functional perception mechanisms in order to better navigate their particular cultural environment.