Download or read book The Sociocultural Brain written by Shihui Han and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How is the human brain shaped by our sociocultural experiences? What neural correlates underlie the extraordinary cultural diversity of human behavior? How do our genes interact with sociocultural experiences to moderate human brain functional organization and behavior? This Sociocultural Brain provides a new perspective on human brain functional organization, highlighting the role of human sociocultural experience and its interaction with genes in shaping human brain and behavior. Drawing on cutting edge research from the burgeoning field of cultural neuroscience, it reveals the cross-cultural differences in human brain activity that underlye a multitude of cognitive and affective processes - including visual perception/attention, memory, causal attribution, inference of others' mental states, self-reflection, and empathy. In addition, it presents studies that integrate brain imaging and cultural priming to explore the causal relationship between culture and brain functional organization. The book ends with a discussion of the implications of cultural neuroscience findings for understanding the nature of human brain and culture, as well as the implications for education, cross-cultural communication and conflict, and the clinical treatment of mental disorders.
Download or read book Our Biosocial Brains written by Michele K. Lewis and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2020-07-07 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Our Biosocial Brains, Michele Lewis underscores culture, brain, behavior, and social problems to advocate for a more inclusive cultural neuroscience. Traditional neuroscientists to date have not prioritized studying the impact of power, bias, and injustice on neural processing and the brain’s perception of marginalized humans. Lewis explains current events, historical events, and scientific studies, in Our Biosocial Brains. Readers will be drawn to the relevancy of brain science to examples of injustices and social bias. Lewis also argues that incorporating non-western African-Centered Psychology is vital to diversifying research questions and diversifying interpretations of existing brain science, because African-Centered Psychology is not rooted in racist, classist, and exclusionary hegemonic methods. Lewis argues for attention to marginalized populations, regarding the impact of violence, disrespect, othering, slurs, environmental injustice, health, and general disregard on humans’ brains and behavior. Using hundreds of peer-reviewed studies and original research, the author presents scientific studies that are integrated with sociocultural explanations to foster wider understanding of how our sociocultural world shapes our brains, and how our brains’ responses influence how humans perceive and treat one another.
Download or read book Sociocultural Studies of Mind written by James V. Wertsch and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1995-04-28 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on three unifying ideas, this landmark volume defines an approach to sociocultural psychology which the authors hope will continue to be debated and redefined. It addresses the question of how mental functioning is related to its cultural, historical and institutional settings.
Download or read book Brain and Culture written by Bruce E. Wexler and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2008-08-29 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Research shows that between birth and early adulthood the brain requires sensory stimulation to develop physically. The nature of the stimulation shapes the connections among neurons that create the neuronal networks necessary for thought and behavior. By changing the cultural environment, each generation shapes the brains of the next. By early adulthood, the neuroplasticity of the brain is greatly reduced, and this leads to a fundamental shift in the relationship between the individual and the environment: during the first part of life, the brain and mind shape themselves to the major recurring features of their environment; by early adulthood, the individual attempts to make the environment conform to the established internal structures of the brain and mind. In Brain and Culture, Bruce Wexler explores the social implications of the close and changing neurobiological relationship between the individual and the environment, with particular attention to the difficulties individuals face in adulthood when the environment changes beyond their ability to maintain the fit between existing internal structure and external reality. These difficulties are evident in bereavement, the meeting of different cultures, the experience of immigrants (in which children of immigrant families are more successful than their parents at the necessary internal transformations), and the phenomenon of interethnic violence. Integrating recent neurobiological research with major experimental findings in cognitive and developmental psychology—with illuminating references to psychoanalysis, literature, anthropology, history, and politics—Wexler presents a wealth of detail to support his arguments. The groundbreaking connections he makes allow for reconceptualization of the effect of cultural change on the brain and provide a new biological base from which to consider such social issues as "culture wars" and ethnic violence.
Download or read book Culture Mind and Brain written by Laurence J. Kirmayer and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-09-24 with total page 683 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent neuroscience research makes it clear that human biology is cultural biology - we develop and live our lives in socially constructed worlds that vary widely in their structure values, and institutions. This integrative volume brings together interdisciplinary perspectives from the human, social, and biological sciences to explore culture, mind, and brain interactions and their impact on personal and societal issues. Contributors provide a fresh look at emerging concepts, models, and applications of the co-constitution of culture, mind, and brain. Chapters survey the latest theoretical and methodological insights alongside the challenges in this area, and describe how these new ideas are being applied in the sciences, humanities, arts, mental health, and everyday life. Readers will gain new appreciation of the ways in which our unique biology and cultural diversity shape behavior and experience, and our ongoing adaptation to a constantly changing world.
Download or read book The Sociocultural Brain written by Shihui Han and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-05-25 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How is the human brain shaped by our sociocultural experiences? What neural correlates underlie the extraordinary cultural diversity of human behavior? How do our genes interact with sociocultural experiences to moderate human brain functional organization and behavior? This Sociocultural Brain provides a new perspective on human brain functional organization, highlighting the role of human sociocultural experience and its interaction with genes in shaping human brain and behavior. Drawing on cutting edge research from the burgeoning field of cultural neuroscience, it reveals the cross-cultural differences in human brain activity that underlye a multitude of cognitive and affective processes - including visual perception/attention, memory, causal attribution, inference of others’ mental states, self-reflection, and empathy. In addition, it presents studies that integrate brain imaging and cultural priming to explore the causal relationship between culture and brain functional organization. The book ends with a discussion of the implications of cultural neuroscience findings for understanding the nature of human brain and culture, as well as the implications for education, cross-cultural communication and conflict, and the clinical treatment of mental disorders.
Download or read book Voices of the Mind written by James V. WERTSCH and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Voices of the Mind, James Wertsch outlines an approach to mental functioning that stresses its inherent cultural, historical, and institutional context. A critical aspect of this approach is the cultural tools or mediational means that shape both social and individual processes. In considering how these mediational means--in particular, language--emerge in social history and the role they play in organizing the settings in which human beings are socialized, Wertsch achieves fresh insights into essential areas of human mental functioning that are typically unexplored or misunderstood. Although Wertsch's discussion draws on the work of a variety of scholars in the social sciences and the humanities, the writings of two Soviet theorists, L. S. Vygotsky (1896-1934) and Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975), are of particular significance. Voices of the Mind breaks new ground in reviewing and integrating some of their major theoretical ideas and in demonstrating how these ideas can be extended to address a series of contemporary issues in psychology and related fields. A case in point is Wertsch's analysis of voice, which exemplifies the collaborative nature of his effort. Although some have viewed abstract linguistic entities, such as isolated words and sentences, as the mechanism shaping human thought, Wertsch turns to Bakhtin, who demonstrated the need to analyze speech in terms of how it appropriates the voices of others in concrete sociocultural settings. These appropriated voices may be those of specific speakers, such as one's parents, or they may take the form of social languages characteristic of a category of speakers, such as an ethnic or national community. Speaking and thinking thus involve the inherent process of ventriloquating through the voices of other socioculturally situated speakers. Voices of the Mind attempts to build upon this theoretical foundation, persuasively arguing for the essential bond between cognition and culture.
Download or read book Nurturing Natures written by Graham Music and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-01-24 with total page 446 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This new edition of the bestselling text, Nurturing Natures, provides an indispensable synthesis of the latest scientific knowledge about children’s emotional development. Integrating a wealth of both up-to-date and classical research from areas such as attachment theory, neuroscience, developmental psychology and cross-cultural studies, it weaves these into an accessible, enjoyable text that always keeps in mind children recognisable to academics, practitioners and parents. New to this edition, the book considers transgender issues, same-sex parenting, experiences of black and minority ethnic groups, well-being and the impact of mental health in relation to climate change anxiety. It looks at key developmental stages from life in the womb to the preschool years and right up until adolescence, examining how children develop language, play and memory and moral capacities. Issues of nature and nurture are addressed and the effects of different kinds of early experiences are unpicked, creating a coherent and balanced view of the developing child in context. Nurturing Natures is written by an experienced child therapist who has used a wide array of research from different disciplines to create a highly readable and scientifically trustworthy text. Equipped with key points, questions for consideration, further reading and online video chapter introductions, this book is essential reading for childcare students, teachers, social workers, health visitors, early years practitioners and those training or working in child counselling, psychiatry and mental health. Full of fascinating findings, it provides answers to many of the questions people really want to ask about the human journey from conception into adulthood.
Download or read book Folk Psychological Narratives written by Daniel D. Hutto and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2012-08-24 with total page 371 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An argument that challenges the dominant "theory theory" and simulation theory approaches to folk psychology by claiming that our everyday understanding of intentional actions done for reasons is acquired by exposure to and engaging in specific kinds of narratives. Established wisdom in cognitive science holds that the everyday folk psychological abilities of humans—our capacity to understand intentional actions performed for reasons—are inherited from our evolutionary forebears. In Folk Psychological Narratives, Daniel Hutto challenges this view (held in somewhat different forms by the two dominant approaches, "theory theory" and simulation theory) and argues for the sociocultural basis of this familiar ability. He makes a detailed case for the idea that the way we make sense of intentional actions essentially involves the construction of narratives about particular persons. Moreover he argues that children acquire this practical skill only by being exposed to and engaging in a distinctive kind of narrative practice. Hutto calls this developmental proposal the narrative practice hypothesis (NPH). Its core claim is that direct encounters with stories about persons who act for reasons (that is, folk psychological narratives) supply children with both the basic structure of folk psychology and the norm-governed possibilities for wielding it in practice. In making a strong case for the as yet underexamined idea that our understanding of reasons may be socioculturally grounded, Hutto not only advances and explicates the claims of the NPH, but he also challenges certain widely held assumptions. In this way, Folk Psychological Narratives both clears conceptual space around the dominant approaches for an alternative and offers a groundbreaking proposal.
Download or read book Connections written by Stephen P. Reyna and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2003-09-02 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Have you ever wondered how the internal space of our brain connects with the external space of society? Drawing on hermeneutics and neuroscience Stephen Reyna develops an anthropological theory that explains the relationship between the biological and the cultural. Recent popular interest in the brain is evident, and now social anthropologists are starting to consider connections between science and anthropology. Reyna is an anthropologist prepared to tackle big and difficult questions. This accessibly written book will cause quite a stir in anthropology, and will appeal to those interested in the mysteries of the brain.
Download or read book Cultural Neuroscience Cultural Influences on Brain Function written by Juan Y. Chiao and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2009-11-25 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume presents recent empirical advances using neuroscience techniques to investigate how culture influences neural processes underlying a wide range of human abilities, from perception and scene processing to memory and social cognition. It also highlights the theoretical and methodological issues with conducting cultural neuroscience research. Section I provides diverse theoretical perspectives on how culture and biology interact are represented. Sections II –VI is to demonstrate how cultural values, beliefs, practices and experience affect neural systems underlying a wide range of human behavior from perception and cognition to emotion, social cognition and decision-making. The final section presents arguments for integrating the study of culture and the human brain by providing an explicit articulation of how the study of culture can inform the study of the brain and vice versa.
Download or read book Vygotsky and the Social Formation of Mind written by James V. Wertsch and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1988-10-15 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a book of intellectual breadth, James Wertsch not only offers a synthesis and critique of all Vygotsky’s major ideas, but also presents a program for using Vygotskian theory as a guide to contemporary research in the social sciences and humanities. He draws extensively on all Vygotsky’s works, both in Russian and in English, as well as on his own studies in the Soviet Union with colleagues and students of Vygotsky. Vygotsky’s writings are an enormously rich source of ideas for those who seek an account of the mind as it relates to the social and physical world. Wertsch explores three central themes that run through Vygotsky’s work: his insistence on using genetic, or developmental, analysis; his claim that higher mental functioning in the individual has social origins; and his beliefs about the role of tools and signs in human social and psychological activity Wertsch demonstrates how the notion of semiotic mediation is essential to understanding Vygotsky’s unique contribution to the study of human consciousness. In the last four chapters Wertsch extends Vygotsky’s claims in light of recent research in linguistics, semiotics, and literary theory. The focus on semiotic phenomena, especially human language, enables him to integrate findings from the wide variety of disciplines with which Vygotsky was concerned Wertsch shows how Vygotsky’s approach provides a principled way to link the various strands of human science that seem more isolated than ever today.
Download or read book The Social Brain written by Jean Decety and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2020-08-18 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A range of empirical and theoretical perspectives on the relationship between biology and social cognition from infancy through childhood. Recent research on the developmental origins of the social mind supports the view that social cognition is present early in infancy and childhood in surprisingly sophisticated forms. Developmental psychologists have found ingenious ways to test the social abilities of infants and young children, and neuroscientists have begun to study the neurobiological mechanisms that implement and guide early social cognition. Their work suggests that, far from being unfinished adults, babies are exquisitely designed by evolution to capture relevant social information, learn, and explore their social environments. This volume offers a range of empirical and theoretical perspectives on the relationship between biology and social cognition from infancy through childhood. The contributors consider scientific advances in early social perception and cognition, including findings on the development of face processing and social perceptual biases; explore recent research on early infant competencies for language and theory of mind, including a developmental account of how young children become moral agents and the role of electrophysiology in identifying psychological processes that underpin social cognition; discuss the origins and development of prosocial behavior, reviewing evidence for a set of innate predispositions to be social, cooperative, and altruistic; examine how young children make social categories; and analyze atypical social cognition, including autism spectrum disorder and psychopathy. Contributors Lior Abramson, Renée Baillargeon, Pascal Belin, Frances Buttelmann, Sofia Cardenas, Michael J. Crowley, Fabrice Damon, Jean Decety, Michelle de Haan, Ghislaine Dehaene-Lambertz, Melody Buyukozer Dawkins, Xiao Pan Ding, Kristen A. Dunfield, Rachel D. Fine, Ana Fló, Jennifer R. Frey, Susan A. Gelman, Diane Goldenberg, Marie-Hélène Grosbras, Tobias Grossmann, Caitlin M. Hudac, Dora Kampis, Tara A. Karasewich, Ariel Knafo-Noam, Tehila Kogut, Ágnes Melinda Kovács, Valerie A. Kuhlmeier, Kang Lee, Narcis Marshall, Eamon McCrory, David Méary, Christos Panagiotopoulos, Olivier Pascalis, Markus Paulus, Kevin A. Pelphrey, Marcela Peña, Valerie F. Reyna, Marjorie Rhodes, Ruth Roberts, Hagit Sabato, Darby Saxbe, Virginia Slaughter, Jessica A. Sommerville, Maayan Stavans, Nikolaus Steinbeis, Fransisca Ting, Florina Uzefovsky, Essi Viding
Download or read book Critical Neuroscience written by Suparna Choudhury and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2016-08-08 with total page 429 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Critical Neuroscience: A Handbook of the Social and Cultural Contexts of Neuroscience brings together multi-disciplinary scholars from around the world to explore key social, historical and philosophical studies of neuroscience, and to analyze the socio-cultural implications of recent advances in the field. This text’s original, interdisciplinary approach explores the creative potential for engaging experimental neuroscience with social studies of neuroscience while furthering the dialogue between neuroscience and the disciplines of the social sciences and humanities. Critical Neuroscience transcends traditional skepticism, introducing novel ideas about ‘how to be critical’ in and about science.
Download or read book Beyond the Brain written by Igor M. Arievitch and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-08-24 with total page 8 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book outlines a fundamental alternative to the rising wave of aggressive biological reductionism and brainism in contemporary psychology and education. It offers steps to achieving a daunting and elusive goal: constructing a coherently non-reductionist account of the mind. The main obstacle to such a construction is identified as the centuries-old contemplative fallacy that leads to entrenched dualisms and shackles major theoretical frameworks. The alternative agentive activity perspective overcomes this fallacy by advancing the core principles of the cultural-historical activity theory. This innovative perspective charts a consistently non-mentalist and non-individualist view of psychological processes without discarding the individual mind. A vast body of research and theories, from Piaget and Dewey to sociocultural and embodied cognition approaches are critically engaged, with a special focus on Piotr Galperin’s contribution. The notion of the embodied agent’s object-directed activity serves as a pivotal point for re-conceptualizing the mind and its role in behavior. In a radical departure from both the traditional mentalist and biologically reductionist frameworks, psychological processes are understood as taking place “beyond the brain” – as constituted by the agent’s activities in the world. From this standpoint, many of Vygotsky’s key insights, including semiotic mediation, internalization, and cognitive tools are given a fresh scrutiny and substantially revised. The agentive activity perspective opens ways to offer a bold vision for education: developmental teaching and learning built on the premise that real knowledge is not “information storage and retrieval” and that education is not about “knowledge transmission” but instead it is about developing students’ minds.
Download or read book Social Brain Matters written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2007-01-01 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines philosophical and scientific implications of Neodarwinism relative to recent empirical data. It develops explanations of social behavior and cognition through analysis of mental capabilities and consideration of ethical issues. It includes debate within cognitive science among explanations of social and moral phenomena from philosophy, evolutionary and cognitive psychology, neurobiology, linguistics, and computer science.The series Cognitive Science provides an original corpus of scholarly work that makes explicit the import of cognitive-science research for philosophical analysis. Topics include the nature, structure, and justification of knowledge, cognitive architectures and development, brain-mind theories, and consciousness.
Download or read book Mind in Society written by L. S. Vygotsky and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2012-10-01 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The great Russian psychologist L. S. Vygotsky has long been recognized as a pioneer in developmental psychology. But somewhat ironically, his theory of development has never been well understood in the West. Mind in Society should correct much of this misunderstanding. Carefully edited by a group of outstanding Vygotsky scholars, the book presents a unique selection of Vygotsky’s important essays, most of which have previously been unavailable in English. The Vygotsky who emerges from these pages can no longer be glibly included among the neobehaviorists. In these essays he outlines a dialectical-materialist theory of cognitive development that anticipates much recent work in American social science. The mind, Vygotsky argues, cannot be understood in isolation from the surrounding society. Man is the only animal who uses tools to alter his own inner world as well as the world around him. From the handkerchief knotted as a simple mnemonic device to the complexities of symbolic language, society provides the individual with technology that can be used to shape the private processes of mind. In Mind in Society Vygotsky applies this theoretical framework to the development of perception, attention, memory, language, and play, and he examines its implications for education. The result is a remarkably interesting book that is bound to renew Vygotsky’s relevance to modern psychological thought.
