Neuroanthropology

Neuroanthropology is the study of culture and the brain. This field explores how new findings in the brain sciences help us understand the interactive effects of culture and biology on human development and behavior. In one way or another, neuroanthropologists ground their research and explanations in how the human brain develops, how it is structured and how it functions within the genetic and cultural limits of its biology (see Biogenetic Structuralism and related website).

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“Neuroanthropology” is a broad term, intended to embrace all dimensions of human neural activity, including emotion, perception, cognitive, motor control, skill acquisition, and a range of other issues. Interests include the evolution of the hominid brain, cultural development and the brain, the biochemistry of the brain and alternative states of consciousness, human universals, how culture influences perception, how the brain structures experience, and so forth. In comparison to previous ways of doing psychological or cognitive anthropology, it remains open and heterogeneous, recognizing that not all brain systems function in the same way, so culture will not take ahold of them in identical fashion.

Further reading

• Arbib, Michael A. (1989) The Metaphorical Brain 2: Neural Networks and Beyond. New York: Wiley.
• Calvin, William H. (1989) The Cerebral Symphony. New York: Bantam.
• Donald, Merlin (1991) Origins of the Modern Mind: Three Stages in the Evolution of Culture and Cognition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Falk, Dean (1992) Braindance. New York: Henry Holt & Co.
• Harris, M., ed. (2007). "Ways of Knowing: New Approaches in the Anthropology of Experience and Learning." Oxford: Berghahn.
• Jerison, H.J. and I. Jerison (1988) Intelligence and Evolutionary Biology. Berlin: Springer-Verlag.
• Laughlin, C.D., John McManus and E.G. d'Aquili (1990) Brain, Symbol and Experience: Toward a Neurophenomenology of Human Consciousness. New York: Columbia University Press.
• Quartz, S.R. and T.J Sejnowksi (2003). "Liars, Lovers, and Heroes: What the New Brain Science Reveals About How We Become Who We Are." New York: Harper Paperbacks.
• Winkelman, Michael (2000) Shamanism: The Neural Ecology of Consciousness and Healing. Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey.