Our brains are absolutely amazing organs that we still know very little about. But with the advance of neuroimaging technologies such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), researchers continue to pry open the inner workings of the brain. And they’re finding some interesting stuff.
As we reported on Friday, Culture Affects The Way We Use Our Brain, researchers found that people from different cultures showed different patterns of brain activation when performing similar tasks:
Americans, when making relative judgments that are typically harder for them, activated brain regions involved in attention-demanding mental tasks. They showed much less activation of these regions when making the more culturally familiar absolute judgments. East Asians showed the opposite tendency, engaging the brain’s attention system more for absolute judgments than for relative judgments.
This research suggests that brain structure and functioning may not be set in stone and universally the same across cultures.
Future brain research, therefore, may only be applicable to the cultural group it was conducted with. And one’s cultural group should be monitored in future studies to ensure this variable doesn’t inadvertently confound such brain research.
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3 Comments to
“How We Use Our Brain May be Affected by Our Culture”
Nice article, very cool… Thanks for sharing.
Although I wish this post would have been longer, I do like it. American’s typically do not like to make deffinate decisions. We like to leave availability and room for error. This could easily be part of the reason why American’s show more brain stimulation.
Thanks budy, it really help me to understand abit abt my own brain…!!
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Last reviewed: By John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on 14 Jan 2008
