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Culture, neurobiology, and human behavior: new perspectives in anthropology

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Abstract

Our primary goal in this article is to discuss the cross-talk between biological and cultural factors that become manifested in the individual brain development, neural wiring, neurochemical homeostasis, and behavior. We will show that behavioral propensities are the product of both cultural and biological factors and an understanding of these interactive processes can provide deep insights into why people behave the way they do. This interdisciplinary perspective is offered in an effort to generate dialog and empirical work among scholars interested in merging aspects of anthropology and neuroscience, and anticipates that biological and cultural anthropology converge. We discuss new theoretical developments, hypothesis-testing strategies, and cross-disciplinary methods of observation and data collection. We believe that the exigency of integrating anthropology and the neurosciences is indisputable and anthropology’s role in an emerging interdisciplinary science of human behavior will be critical because its focus is, and has always been, on human biological and cultural systems.

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Notes

  1. fMRI measures brain activity by investigating changes associated with the blood flow in a region of neurons. Given the average density of neurons and synapses in the cerebral cortex of about 12 × 104 and 9 × 108 per mm3, respectively, each voxel (the pixel of fMRI screens), captures blood flow in the region of approximately 80,000 neurons and more than 4 million synapses averaged over one second in this region. Thus, it is clear that the fMRI signal can just serve as an index of the overall activity of many neurons and processes (Raz 2012).

  2. External factors include also epigenetic information. In rhesus monkeys one-fifth of the entire genome is differentially methylated in brain cells compared to blood cells. This large epigenetic difference seems to be a function of early social experience (Suomi 2009). There is good reason to assume that the human genome undergoes epigenetic changes to a similar or greater extent due to extensive gene—environment interactions.

  3. The terms “race” and “race bias” are used in much of the contemporary literature dealing with this subject. Anthropologists have rightfully rejected the traditional concept of “race” and the cited authors reject the traditional term as well; they clearly understand that “race” is a cultural construct.

  4. It should, however, be noted that unequivocal evidence is still missing whether oxytocin can actually cross the blood–brain barriere. Thus, most studies using nasal oxytocin sprays only provide indirect evidence of oxytocin effects on the brain as cerebrospinal fluids are usually not measured.

  5. However, one needs to take the hemodynamic response of fMRI studies into account that is about 4–6 s. This requires a precise temporal planning of the multi-paradigm set-up, something that is done for many other studies in which reaction time of subjects is an important parameter that must be controlled for.

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Acknowledgements

First and foremost we would like to recognize intellectual debt that two of us (Larson and Sarto-Jackson) owe to our co-author Werner Callebaut. Sadly, we lost our dear friend in 2014. Werner’s keen intellect, analytical mind and philosopher’s perspective is greatly missed. He made any discussion about biology, evolution, epigenetics and human behavior more interesting and profound. But, it is his sense of humor, appreciation for fairness, and shared love of jazz that we also greatly miss.

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  1. Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research, Klosterneuburg, Austria

    Isabella Sarto-Jackson & Werner Callebaut

  2. Emeritus, California State University, Long Beach, CA, USA

    Daniel O. Larson

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  1. Isabella Sarto-Jackson
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Correspondence to Isabella Sarto-Jackson.

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Sarto-Jackson, I., Larson, D.O. & Callebaut, W. Culture, neurobiology, and human behavior: new perspectives in anthropology. Biol Philos 32, 729–748 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-017-9574-2

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