Taking a Computational Cultural Neuroscience Approach to Study Parent-Child Similarities in Diverse Cultural Contexts

Parent-child similarities and discrepancies at multiple levels provide a window to understand the cultural transmission process. Although prior research has examined parent-child similarities at the belief, behavioral, and physiological levels across cultures, little is known about parent-child similarities at the neural level. The current review introduces an interdisciplinary computational cultural neuroscience approach, which utilizes computational methods to understand neural and psychological processes being involved during parent-child interactions at intra- and inter-personal level. This review provides three examples, including the application of intersubject representational similarity analysis to analyze naturalistic neuroimaging data, the usage of computer vision to capture non-verbal social signals during parent-child interactions, and unraveling the psychological complexities involved during real-time parent-child interactions based on their simultaneous recorded brain response patterns. We hope that this computational cultural neuroscience approach can provide researchers an alternative way to examine parent-child similarities and discrepancies across different cultural contexts and gain a better understanding of cultural transmission processes.

On Specific Class of Cultural Phenomena Orthodox Culturology in the Time of Soviet Marxist Psychologists

The article is devoted to the analysis of the perspective of Orthodox culturology of Soviet period – cultural and historical and active approach of Soviet psychology and culturology, as well as the attitude theory. The author resorts to the works of Soviet psychologists (L.S. Vygotsky, A.N. Leontiev, N.D. Uznadze, S.L. Rubinstein and others), culturologists and philosophers (E.V. Ilyenkov, E.S. Markaryan, M.S. Kagan and others), as well as Russian and American followers of cultural and historical psychology (E.Ya. Rezhabek, A.A. Filatova, M. Cole, J. Bruner and others). Special attention and paid to cognitive psychology and cultural neuroscience inasmuch as they are connected with cultural and historical psychology. The main emphasis is made on how various scientists choose the phenomena that can be defines as properly cultural. On the basis of the analysis of the concepts of Soviet psychologists and their American followers the author draws up the scheme of the cultural and the psychological co-relation that remains eclectic if one ignores the influence of the spiritual world on the cultural and psychological aspects.

The Number and the Kantian Research Program in Modern Neuroscience

The article presents the attempt to consider the Kantian research program in modern neuroscience in its part, which relates to the representation of the “number” and the mechanisms for processing numerical information by neu­ral structures. We claim that Kantian ideas about the a priori nature of certain mathematical categories related to the status of space and time [geometry and arithmetic], which were subjected to doubt as a result of the discovery of non-Euclidean geometries, proved to be highly demanded and reassessed as a result of the intensive progress of modern cognitive and cultural neuroscience. The dis­covery of the subitizing phenomena, “sense of number” and “sense of place” (analogous to the navigation system of the brain) push us to recall the old Kan­tian judgments concerning certain a priori constructions of mathematics. The on­togenetic foundations of such phenomena, their conditionality by the features of the functioning of the brain, reveal not the metaphorical, but the strategic nature of the Kantian research program in modern neuroscience. In the context of these studies, it also turned out that in the case of living systems, one can speak about their proto-arithmetic traits, and in the case of humans, mathematical abilities that are largely independent of the language, and their systematic development from an early age significantly increases the likelihood of successful mathemati­cal activity in future. Attention drawn to the interdependence of the activity of the developing brain, social and cultural contexts, which intersects and expressed in the process of acculturation of the brain and vice versa – neural determination of culture. This kind of interaction support the idea of the possibility of expand­ing original Kantian idea and introducing the idea related to the transcendental­ism of the activity type

A Call for Greater Attention to Culture in the Study of Brain and Development

Despite growing research on neurobiological development, little attention has been paid to cultural and ethnic variation in neurodevelopmental processes. We present an overview of the current state of developmental cognitive neuroscience with respect to its attention to cultural issues. Analyses based on 80 publications represented in five recent meta-analyses related to adolescent developmental neuroscience show that 99% of the publications used samples in Western countries. Only 22% of studies provided a detailed description of participants’ racial/ethnic background, and only 18% provided for socioeconomic status. Results reveal a trend in developmental cognitive neuroscience research: The body of research is derived not only mostly from Western samples but also from participants whose race/ethnicity is unknown. To achieve a holistic perspective on brain development in different cultural contexts, we propose and highlight an emerging interdisciplinary approach—developmental cultural neuroscience—the intersection of developmental psychology, cultural psychology, and cognitive neuroscience. Developmental cultural neuroscience aims to elucidate cultural similarities and differences in neural processing across the life span. We call attention to the importance of incorporating culture into the empirical investigation of neurodevelopment.

A Call for Greater Attention to Culture in the Study of Brain and Development

Despite growing research on neurobiological development, little attention has been paid to cultural and ethnic variation in neurodevelopmental processes. We present an overview of the current state of developmental cognitive neuroscience, with respect to its attention to cultural issues. Analyses based on 80 publications represented in 5 recent meta-analyses related to adolescent developmental neuroscience show that 99% of the publications utilized samples in Western countries. Only 22% of studies provided a detailed description of participants’ racial/ethnic background and 18% for socioeconomic status. Results reveal a trend in developmental cognitive neuroscience research: not only is this body of research mostly derived from Western samples, but the race/ethnicity of the majority of participants is unknown. To achieve a holistic perspective on brain development in different cultural contexts, we propose and highlight an emerging interdisciplinary approach – developmental cultural neuroscience – the intersection of developmental psychology, cultural psychology, and cognitive neuroscience. Developmental cultural neuroscience aims to elucidate cultural similarities and differences in neural processing across the lifespan. We call attention to the importance of incorporating culture into the empirical investigation of neurodevelopment.