Cultural Differences in the Self: From Philosophy to Psychology and Neuroscience

Different thinking styles in Westerners and Chinese (analytic vs. holistic) lead to disparities between the two cultures not only in perception and attention but also in high‐level social cognition such as self‐representation. Most Western philosophers discussed the self by focusing on personal self‐identity, whereas Chinese philosophers emphasized the relation between the self and others. Dissimilar philosophical thinking of the self is associated with distinct cognitive styles of self‐representation (i.e., the independent self in Westerners and the interdependent self in Chinese). Recent brain imaging studies found that Westerners employed the medial prefrontal cortex to represent only the individual self, whereas Chinese utilized the same brain area to represent both the self and close others, providing neural basis of cultural differences in self‐representation. We suggest that the cultural differences in thinking styles between Westerners and Chinese influence both psychological and neural structure of self‐representation.     

Broadening the Study of the Self: Integrating the Study of Personal Identity and Cultural Identity

This article reviews what is known and what remains to be studied, regarding the association between personal identity and cultural identity. Although these two conceptions of identity have inspired separate literatures and have developed independently of one another, globalization and mass immigration have increased the need to study these two conceptions of identity together. The article puts forth recommendations for integrating the literatures on personal identity and cultural identity. These recommendations include using multidimensional constructs to represent both personal identity and cultural identity, refining the measurement of personal identity and of cultural identity, and of studying these conceptions of identity across various ethnic, cultural, and national groups.     

Broadening Political Psychology

One hundred years ago, if we proposed that we could make you happy with a pill, we would have been ridiculed and would have entered the realm of science fiction and not science itself. Yet that is precisely where we are today. The genetics and neurobiological revolution is upon us, and we advocate that political psychology not simply join this revolution but take a lead role in it. Here in this review, we explore the various ways in which political psychology can embrace this revolution and incorporate work in neuropsychology, cognitive neuroscience, psychiatry, endocrinology, and recent advances in genetics. In doing so, we advocate the adoption of an epidemiological approach and discuss the ways in which various methods including physiological experimentation, genetic analysis, and neurological explorations including MRIs and other technical advances provide critical insight into human behavior and present intriguing possibilities for exploring the nature of political attitudes, attachments, and behaviors. In advocating for broadening the approaches used in the field, we reflect critically on how we might improve and strengthen the accuracy of our understanding of the psychological bases of political preferences and behavior in the future.     

Neuroscience and education

Neuroscience is a relatively new discipline encompassing neurology, psychology and biology. It has made great strides in the last 100 years, during which many aspects of the physiology, biochemistry, pharmacology and structure of the vertebrate brain have been understood. Understanding of some of the basic perceptual, cognitive, attentional, emotional and mnemonic functions is also making progress, particularly since the advent of the cognitive neurosciences, which focus specifically on understanding higher level processes of cognition via imaging technology. Neuroimaging has enabled scientists to study the human brain at work in vivo, deepening our understanding of the very complex processes underpinning speech and language, thinking and reasoning, reading and mathematics. It seems timely, therefore, to consider how we might implement our increased understanding of brain development and brain function to explore educational questions.     

现代神经科学发展述略

现代神经科学的产生是神经解剖学、神经生物化学、神经生理学等传统生物学科与神经心理学、认知心理学等行为科学之间不断融合的结果。在神经科学产生与发展历程中,有许多值得研究总结的方法论问题。     

Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience

Book reviewed:
M. R. Bennett and P. M. S. Hacker, Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience. Reviewed by David Cockburn Department of Philosophy University of Wales Lampeter Lampeter Ceredigion SA48 7ED     

Personality Neuroscience and the Biology of Traits

Personality neuroscience involves the use of neuroscience methods to study individual differences in behavior, motivation, emotion, and cognition. Personality psychology has contributed much to identifying the important dimensions of personality, but relatively little to understanding the biological sources of those dimensions. However, the rapidly expanding field of personality neuroscience is increasingly shedding light on this topic. This article provides a survey of progress in the use of neuroscience to study personality traits, organized using a hierarchical model of traits based on the Big Five dimensions: Extraversion, Neuroticism, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Openness/Intellect. Evidence is reviewed for hypotheses about the biological systems involved in each trait.     

Posttraumatic Therapy in the Age of Neuroscience

When people develop PTSD in the wake of exposure to a traumatic event, the imprint of that trauma comes to dominate how they organize their way in the world. Verbalizing, making meaning, and putting the event in contezt may provide a means of feeling understood, rejoining the human race, and gaining perspective on the experience, but it may do, little toreorganize the person to feel safe and focused on fulfilling the demands of the present. Given the subcortical nature of trauma imprints, effctive therapy needs to help survivors tolerate the sensory reminders of the trauma, and physically experience efficacy and purpose in response to stimuli that once triggered feelings of helplessness and dependence.     

Computational Cognitive Neuroscience of the Visual System

ABSTRACT— Should psychologists care about functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)? Within the field of visual perception, the answer to this question is an emphatic "yes." There is a long history of close interactions between psychology and neuroscience in the study of vision. In the 1980s, vision researchers developed a general framework for combining the two fields, and that framework still supports much current research. This article will briefly cover this general approach and then will illustrate how neuroimaging allows the framework to be applied to human perception. In short, fMRI can measure how information is represented in sequential stages of processing. These same representations can also be measured behaviorally. Theories of vision specify how the sequential representations participate in well-defined computations that underlie perception.     

Radical Embodied Cognitive Neuroscience

Abstract

A radical embodied cognitive neuroscience (RECN) based on ecological psychology requires the understanding of the brain, its structure, and its functions to be compatible with the main tenets of the Gibsonian theory. In this paper, we propose neural reuse as a promising candidate to achieve such understanding. We base our proposal on two fundamental ideas. In section two, we review what we take to be the two central requirements for a RECN based on ecological psychology: compatibility with the explanation of perception and action at the ecological scale and the rejection of computation as a paradigm for the explanation of the activity of the brain. In section three, we show how neural reuse meets the two requirements and, furthermore, we evaluate its theoretical parallelism with ecological psychology. Finally, after developing these ideas, in the conclusion we put forward further aspects and research possibilities that follow from the coalition of neural reuse and ecological psychology for a Gibsonian neuroscience.     

Spanish validation of the Affective Neuroscience Personality Scales

The Affective Neuroscience Personality Scales have been designed to provide a personality assessment tool based on six distinct affective systems. The six neural systems involved were labeled PLAY, SEEK, CARE, FEAR, ANGER and SADNESS. Spirituality has been integrated into the questionnaire as a seventh dimension because, in opinion of Panksepp and his colleagues is one of the most interesting human emotion. The aim of the present paper was introduce the validation of the Spanish version of Affective Neuroscience Personality Scales and their first psychometric results in a sample of 411 college students. Participants completed the Spanish version of ANPS, just as a personality scale of five factors (NEO-FFI-R), and the Scales of Positive and Negative Affect (PANAS). The factor structure obtained and psychometric properties of the scales indicate that the Spanish version of the scales provides an effective tool to measure the seven dimensions of personality proposal in the original questionnaire.     

Neuroscience and psychopharmacology into the next millennium

The end of the millennium provides an opportunity to review some of the common practices that were present in psychopharmacology during the 20th century. The author focuses on two approaches that have dominated research and guided the clinical application of psychopharmacologic therapeutics: the unitary clinically-based and single-lesion perspectives. The author expands upon these older formulations of neuropsychiatric disease pathogenesis and describes how the approach to psychopharmacologic research and therapeutics has changed in light of advances in the basic neurosciences. Relevant recent advances in the basic neurosciences that shed light on the pathophysiology of neuropsychiatric disease states and that guide psychopharmacologic practices are described. The use of atypical antipsychotic agents to treat schizophrenia is given as one example of the clinical applications of the approach to psychopharmacology in the next century.     

Broadening Engineering Education: Bringing the Community In

Two issues of particular interest in the Irish context are (1) the motivation for broadening engineering education to include the humanities, and an emphasis on social responsibility and (2) the process by which broadening can take place. Greater community engagement, arising from a socially-driven model of engineering education, is necessary if engineering practice is to move beyond its present captivity by corporate interests.