This is always a sure fire way to get people fired up about culture, and by virtue of that race. This piece comes from Live Science and concerns a study that postulates that culture not only effects the kind of music and food you like, but that it also impacts the hard-wiring of your brain.

The research was done by Neuroscientists at MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research, and involved a study for which Americans and East Asians were asked to solve basic shape puzzles while monitoring their brain activity via (fMRI).

They found that both groups could successfully complete the tasks, but American brains had to work harder at relative judgments, while East Asian brains found absolute judgments more challenging.

Previous psychology research has shown that American culture focuses on the individual and values independence, while East Asian culture is more community-focused and emphasizes seeing people and objects in context. This study provides the first neurological evidence that these cultural differences extend to brain activity patterns.

This is pretty well-travelled territory in philosophy of the mindstudies, but the fact that it’s been clinically proven is interesting. Naturally, those involved are being careful in how they present the finding:

“The downside of these cultural studies is that one ends up stereotyping a culture,” he said. “Are you creating big differences between people? I like to think the more you understand different cultures, the better you understand their perspectives.”

And I’m sure there will  be a considerable number of people will disagree with that. It’ll bear watching to see how this plays out in the media. I can think of a few Koreans I know personally who’ll do a little jig in the street when they hear this.

One of the scientists also hinted at a further study that I’m personally even more interested in:

Gabrieli said he is interested in testing whether brain patterns change if a person immigrates.
“There’s a hint that six months in a culture already changes you,” he said, referring to psychological, rather than neurological, research. “It suggests that there’s a lot of flexibility.”

(HT Marmot)