The neurosciences are actually a complicated set of disciplines. From
neurobiology to cognitive psychology. But, the element that unite them is the
brain. All study the brain, either to unravel its physical- chemical processes
to discover certain behavioral traits. It's not weird that they was found in front with
the culture. This science
has had a popular boom thanks to technological advances, especially from fMRI (Functional
Magnetic Resonance Imaging) that lets you see what we had no idea before,
inside a brain while it works.
The Brain Shape Culture
To understand culture we must first know how brain works. We know for
example, which is made as a complex network of neurons that transmit electrical
signals to various specialized areas in the cerebral cortex or other subparts.
We also know that is divided into hemispheres that control different functions
of our personality, but let's see what appear to be key to understanding how
culture works:
1 - Visual Perception: By estimations, our visual capacity occupies over
30% of the brain cortex, is a central and complex element. The human brain
receives from the eye a incomplete image, stained and inverse, is the brain
that is responsible to rebuild those signals into a readable image and makes it auto-completing the information it receives with the previously stored
information. This feature is essential because allows us to
identify faces and read visual aspects about the others, as markers of social
status all at once. First impressions count.
2 - Memory: Two memories exist: short and long term. The first is so
mutable that does not tolerate more than 2 to 7 elements nor for more than 6-30
seconds. The second one recorded only the important,so as the vision, the brain auto -
complete the rest of the information that we need to know. But the long term memory
is highly plastic, and is modifiable each time a memory is invoked, as can be
seen in the following experiment. Such plasticity is able to force significant
changes in brain structure, even in ways that not only involve memory.
3 - Language: the ability to communicate through signs, designated in
Broca's area (spoken language) and Wernicke (understanding language), it is vital
to understand the culture, but as the vision, we are able to distinguish shades
and harmonies (Tour of Heschl). As such sarcastic tone or alarm, let us
understand that paralinguistic communication supplementing meaning.
4 - Mirror
neurons: Due to an error in an experiment with monkeys in 1996 at the
University of Parma, Italy, researchers found that humans and other animals possess mirror
neurons, in other words, empathy. What is surprising is that brain activity is
exactly the same between a subject eating and other looking to eat. In the brain,
there is no difference. This development allows us to imitation learning and socialization.
Our brain is developed to generate that connection with others and be able to
read emotions expressed in the faces of the other (hence our keen ability to
interpret), is undoubtedly the biological basis of communication and culture.
Culture shapes the brain
But brain and culture not only have a linear relationship, both feed back.
And the ability of the brain can manifest culture and contain certain
fundamental aspects of it, the culture also changes brain structures. The
experiences and the environment in which we live build our mental
structure. Not only think differently, our brain be organized differently! but
beware, the brain with new experiences is changing, as well as culture does. Do
not represent a fixed reality.
Many anthropological studies have proved (or disproved) universality of
Human Psychology, putting them to the test in the field in different cultural
contexts, and also had captured and described hundreds of individual processes in
such cultures, but no one had seen what worked in the brain.
A study by
MIT and Stanford University verified these observations through the famous fMRI
, applied to U.S. population and newly migrated from eastern Asia. Their
findings found that different brain areas were activated compared to the same
stimulus, found that Americans were more individualistic and dominant, while
Asians were developing more comfortably and submissively collective .
Another observation
very common among different cultures are the colors. The Eskimos had more than
9 words to refer to the white of the snow, where an observer from another
culture just looks white. In the other hand Himba confuses green from the blue, for
theirs is the same color, a little experiment here.
However, still
begs the questions, where is the culture is stored? In the human brain there is
no specific place where we can read the cultural codes, but separate elements,
language area, memory area, area of abstraction, but not a reader of social
status, custom, norm. The possibilities are in the organization of the brain. The structure of the brain is the neuronal dimension of culture or, as noted by
Roger Barthes, be it in external relations of brains, in exobrain. The
culture would be in those connections among brains a supra-organic dimension,
where the culture would be stored. Culture is the extension of neural
networks of the brain.
Sources:
Barthes R. Anthropology of the Brain
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/techtalk52-14.pdf http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/psychology-0111.html
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