从个体关系的角度看文化对社会脑功能的塑造

摘 要 尽管社会认知的内容丰富多样，但其核心在于人们对“自我”、“他人”及两者关系的理解。文化作为一种独特的社会现象，对社会认知有着广泛影响，这一点集中体现在文化对“自我” 与“他人” 信息加工及其大脑机制的影响上。文化神经科学的研究表明：文化显著影响自我相关记忆、自我表征、自我觉知等自我认知过程。这可能主要来源于不同文化人群自我建构方式的不同。上述差异的神经机制主要体现为不同文化人群自我相关加工时，其内侧前额叶功能性变化的不同。与此相对应的是，文化同样显著影响人们对他人，尤其是对他人情绪的认知。这一点集中表现为表情认知的文化优势效应及共情过程的文化差异。在神经机制上这一差异主要体现为杏仁核功能的文化可塑性。文化神经科学的未来研究，可继续探讨主流文化、区域文化、宗教文化等各种形式的文化差异：1）对自我认知与情绪认知相互作用的影响与神经基础；2）对共情（empathy）、社会比较（social comparison）、心理理论（theory of mind）与协同行为（joint action）等多种社会认知过程的影响及其神经机制。 关键词 自我建构 文化神经科学 情绪认知 自我表征 共情

Understanding the impact of culture on social brain function: The perspective of individual relationship

Abstract：Despite diverse contents, the essence of social cognition lies in the human understanding of self, other and their interrelation. As a unique social phenomenon, culture has extensive influence on social cognition, which is focally manifested by the influence of culture on brain processing of "self" and "other" information. Research in culture neuroscience showed a significant influence of culture on self-related processes such as self-relevant memory and self representation, which probably stems from different styles of self-construal in different cultures. In the cortical level, these differences are mainly manifested by different functional changes in medial prefrontal cortices during self-relevant processing in different cultures. In parallel with these evidence, culture also has an important influence on brain processing of “other” information, particularly other people' emotional states, which is mainly embodied by the culture advantage effect in identifying facial expressions and by the culture differences in empathetic processes. This is most evident in culturally modulating effect in amygdala activation. Future studies of cultural neuroscience, may attach more importance to studying neural mechanisms underlying the impact of culture, sub-culture, and religious culture on diverse forms of social cognition (empathetic processes, social comparison, and joint social action), and on the interaction between self relevant processing and emotional relevant processing. Keywords: Self construal, Cultural Neuroscience, Empathy, Self representation, Emotional processing