It’s no secret culture influences your food preferences and taste in music. But now scientists say it impacts the hard-wiring of your brain. New research shows that people from different cultures use their brains differently to solve basic perceptual tasks. Neuroscientists Trey Hedden and John Gabrieli of MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research asked Americans and East Asians to solve basic shape puzzles while in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner. They found that both groups could successfully complete the tasks, but American brains had to work harder at relative judgments, while East Asian brains found absolute judgments more challenging. Previous psychology research has shown that American culture focuses on the individual and values independence, while East Asian culture is more community-focused and emphasizes seeing people and objects in context. This study provides the first neurological evidence that these cultural differences extend to brain activity patterns. ‘It’s kind of obvious if you look at ads and movies,’ Gabrieli told LiveScience. ‘You can tell that East Asian cultures emphasize interdependence and the U.S. ads all say things like, ‘Be yourself, you’re number one, pursue your goals.’ But how deep does this go? Does it really influence […]
Since its inception in the early 20th century, neuroscience has taught us a tremendous amount about the brain. Our sensations have been reduced to a set of specific circuits. The mind has been imaged as it thinks about itself, with every thought traced back to its cortical source. The most ineffable of emotions have been translated into the terms of chemistry, so that the feeling of love is just a little too much dopamine. Fear is an excited amygdala. Even our sense of consciousness is explained away with references to some obscure property of the frontal cortex. It turns out that there is nothing inherently mysterious about those 3 pounds of wrinkled flesh inside the skull. There is no ghost in the machine. The success of modern neuroscience represents the triumph of a method: reductionism. The premise of reductionism is that the best way to solve a complex problem — and the brain is the most complicated object in the known universe — is to study its most basic parts. The mind, in other words, is just a particular trick of matter, reducible to the callous laws of physics. But the reductionist method, although undeniably successful, has […]
The U.S. public holds Big Business in shockingly low regard. A November 2007 Harris poll found that less than 15 percent of the population believes each of the following industries to be ‘generally honest and trustworthy:’ tobacco companies (3 percent); oil companies (3 percent); managed care companies such as HMOs (5 percent); health insurance companies (7 percent); telephone companies (10 percent); life insurance companies (10 percent); online retailers (10 percent); pharmaceutical and drug companies (11 percent); car manufacturers (11 percent); airlines (11 percent); packaged food companies (12 percent); electric and gas utilities (15 percent). Only 32 percent of adults said they trusted the best-rated industry about which Harris surveyed, supermarkets.[1] These are remarkable numbers. It is very hard to get this degree of agreement about anything. By way of comparison, 79 percent of adults believe the earth revolves around the sun; 18 percent say it is the other way around.[2] The Harris results are not an aberration. The results have not varied considerably over the past five years - although overall trust levels have actually declined from the already very low threshold in 2003. The Harris results are also in line with an array of polling […]
JERUSALEM — Like hundreds of thousands of other Jerusalem residents, Salim Shabane considers himself a Palestinian. But his life and work are intertwined with Israel, where he runs an auto shop. So, despite his tacit support for a Palestinian state, Shabane is part of a new surge of Jerusalem Arabs applying for Israeli citizenship. ‘I live in Israel,’ said Shabane, ‘why shouldn’t I be an Israeli citizen?’ Shabane has plenty of company. After decades of living under Israeli rule and years watching the Palestinian Authority struggling to govern, more Arabs in Jerusalem are casting their lot with Israel. Last year, as peace talks revived the possibility of handing over parts of Jerusalem to a new Palestinian nation, the number of Arab residents applying for Israeli citizenship more than doubled. In 2007, according to the Israeli Interior Ministry, Shabane and 500 other residents of East Jerusalem requested Israeli passports, up from 200 in each of the previous three years. Shabane’s decision to seek full Israeli citizenship reflects the awkward reality for Arabs in Jerusalem: Though many want to see an independent Palestinian state, they don’t want to be part of it. ‘My work and […]
States are trying to disconnect computer-generated political calls that are flooding the nation’s households at election time. More than 5 million automated ‘robo-calls’ have been made to potential voters in early primary states. The number of robo-calls could run into the hundreds of millions this election year as the political parties battle for control of the White House, Congress and state governments. ‘What’s making people mad is the volume of calls,’ says Jerry Dorchuck of Political Marketing International, which provides automated calling services to candidates. ‘People can get 25 automated calls on the day before an election.’ Nineteen states restrict political robo-calls. At least five more will consider limits this year. The laws range from banning automated calls to limiting times when they occur. Some states require calls to identify who’s paying for the call. Other states ban political calls to people on the National Do Not Call Registry for commercial telemarketers. Federal law doesn’t restrict calls from political, religious or non-profit groups. Political candidates and special interest groups have turned to robo-calls because they are fast and cheap. A robo-call costs 2 to 4 cents per household compared with about 50 cents for direct […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
