Passage 2
Scientists have been surprised at how deeply culture--the language we speak, the values weabsorb--shapes the brain, and are rethinking findings derived from studies of Westerners. To takeone recent example, a region behind the forehead called the medial prefrontal cortex supposedlyrepresents the self: it is active when we ( "we" being the Americans in the study) think of our ownidentity and traits. But with Chinese volunteers, the results were strikingly different. The "me"circuit hummed not only when they thought whether a particular adjective described themselves, butalso when they considered whether it described their mother. The Westerners showed no suchoverlap between self and mom. Depending whether one lives in a culture that views the self asautonomous and unique or as connected to and part of a larger whole, this neural circuit takes onquite different functions.
"Cultural neuroscience," as this new field is called, is about discovering such differences. Someof the findings, as with the "me/mom" circuit, buttress longstanding notions of cultural differences.
For instance, it is a cultural cliche that Westerners focus on individual objects while East Asians payattention to context and background (another manifestation of the individualism-collectivism split).
Sure enough, when shown complex, busy scenes, Asian-Americans and non-Asian-Americansrecruited different brain regions. The Asians showed more activity in areas that processfigure-ground relations--holistic context--while the Americans showed more activity in regions thatrecognize objects.
Psychologist Nalini Ambady of Tufts found something similar when she and colleagues showeddrawings of people in a submissive pose (head down, shoulders hunched) or a dominant one (armscrossed, face forward) to Japanese and Americans. The brain′s dopamine-fueled reward circuitbecame most active at the sight of the stance--dominant for Americans, submissive for Japanese--that eac
A.Neural processes are likely to be culturally neutral
B.The brain is believed to be influenced by different cultures
C.Westerners focus on individualism while East Asians on collectivism
D.Neuroscience reveals nothing more than we know from anthropology