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6 - The Brain as a Cultural Artifact

Concepts, Actions, and Experiences within the Human Affective Niche

from Section 2 - The Situated Brain

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 September 2020

Laurence J. Kirmayer
Affiliation:
McGill University, Montréal
Carol M. Worthman
Affiliation:
Emory University, Atlanta
Shinobu Kitayama
Affiliation:
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Robert Lemelson
Affiliation:
University of California, Los Angeles
Constance A. Cummings
Affiliation:
The Foundation for Psychocultural Research
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Summary

In this chapter, we discuss the hypothesis people help to regulate each other’s bodies (for better or for worse), and this is a main mechanism through which culture wires a human brain. Cultural transmission prepares the developing brain and body to meet recurrent demands within a particular cultural context, thereby supporting the development of an internal model that is sufficiently tuned to specific environments. In this way, a human brain becomes wired to run a model of the world that will control the body in an efficient, predictive manner. Our approach provides an empirically inspired account of how a human brain becomes a cultural artifact.

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