Envisioning the future of cultural neuroscience

Abstract

In the present commentary, we first examine the three target articles included in the Asian Journal of Social Psychology special issue on cultural neuroscience. We spell out the contributions that the articles have offered to the field. We extend this examination with our own theoretical model of neuro-culture interaction, which proposes that brain connectivity changes as a function of each person's active, repeated engagement in culture's scripted behavioural patterns (i.e. practices). We then locate the current endeavour of cultural neuroscience within a broader framework, detailing empirical, theoretical, and meta-theoretical reasons why the approach of cultural neuroscience is important to both socio-behavioural and biological sciences. It is concluded that the scholarship demonstrated in the target articles will be an important collective asset for all of us who aspire to understand the human mind as fundamentally biocultural and to study it as such.