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By now, it should come as no surprise when scientists discover yet another case of experience changing the brain. From the sensory information we absorb to the movements we make, our lives leave footprints on the bumps and fissures of our cortex, so much so that experiences can alter "hard-wired" brain structures. Through rehab, stroke patients can coax a region of the motor cortex on the opposite side of the damaged region to pinch-hit, restoring lost mobility; volunteers who are blindfolded for just five days can reprogram their visual cortex to process sound and touch.

Still, scientists have been surprised at how deeply culture—the language we speak, the values we absorb—shapes the brain, and are rethinking findings derived from studies of Westerners. To take one recent example, a region behind the forehead called the medial prefrontal cortex supposedly represents the self: it is active when we ("we" being theAmericans in the study) think of our own identity and traits.But withChinese volunteers, the results were strikingly different. The "me" circuit hummed not only when they thought whether a particular adjective described themselves, but also when they considered whether it described their mother. The Westerners showed no such overlap between self and mom.Depending whether one lives in a culture that views the self as autonomous and unique or as connected to and part of a larger whole, this neural circuit takes on quite different functions.
"Cultural neuroscience," as this new field is called, is about discovering such differences. Some of the findings, as with the "me/mom" circuit, buttress longstanding notions of cultural differences. For instance, it is a cultural cliché that Westerners focus on individual objects whileEastAsians pay attention to context and background (another manifestation of the individualism-collectivism split). Sure enough, when shown complex, busy scenes,Asian-Americans and non-Asian—Americans recruited different brain regions. TheAsians showed more activity in areas that process figure-ground relations—holistic context—while theAmericans showed more activity in regions that recognize objects.
Psychologist NaliniAmbady of Tufts found something similar when she and colleagues showed drawings of people in a submissive pose (head down, shoulders hunched) or a dominant one (arms crossed, face forward) to Japanese andAmericans. The brain’s dopamine-fueled reward circuit became most active at the sight of the stance—dominant forAmericans, submissive for Japanese—that each volunteer’s culture most values, they reported in 2009. This raises an obvious chicken-and-egg question.
Cultural neuroscience wouldn’t be making waves if it found neurobiological bases only for well-known cultural differences. It is also uncovering the unexpecte
D、For instance, a 2006 study found that nativeChinese speakers use a different region of the brain to do simple arithmetic (3+ 4) or decide which number is larger than nativeEnglish speakers do, even though both useArabic numerals. TheChinese use the circuits that process visual and spatial information and plan movements (the latter may be related to the use of the abacus).ButEnglish speakers use language circuits. It is as if the WestConceives numbers as just words, but theEast imbues them with symbolic, spatial freight. "One would think that neural processes involving basic mathematical computations are universal," saysAmbady, but they "seem to be culture-specifiC、"
Not to be the skunk at this party, but I think it’s important to ask whether neuroscience reveals anything more than we already know from, say, anthropology. For instance, it’s well known thatEastAsian cultures prize the collective over the individual, and thatAmericans do the opposite.
Ambady thinks cultural neuroscience does advance understanding. Take the me/mom finding, which, she argues, "attests to the strength of the overlap between self