Current Directions in Psychological Science

Culture and the Brain

Abstract

The goal of this article is to highlight recent work examining how culture affects neural activation. We suggest a framework for cultural neuroscience in which there are two objectives: culture mapping—or the mapping function from patterns characteristic of cultures to their neural processing—and source analysis—or the attempt to determine the sources of observed commonalities and differences. We review links between culture and the brain across fundamental domains of cognitive and social psychology.