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.
Dr. John Grohol is the CEO and founder of Psych Central. He is an author, researcher and expert in mental health online, and has been writing about online behavior, mental health and psychology issues -- as well as the intersection of technology and human behavior -- since 1992. Dr. Grohol sits on the editorial board of the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking and is a founding board member and treasurer of the Society for Participatory Medicine.Like this author?
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Last reviewed: By John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on 14 Jan 2008
Published on PsychCentral.com. All rights reserved.
Grohol, J. (2008). How We Use Our Brain May be Affected by Our Culture. Psych Central. Retrieved on February 14, 2012, from http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2008/01/14/how-we-use-our-brain-may-be-affected-by-our-culture/
