Hello everyone.

Welcome to a new weekend!

Topic of the week: culture

We know that experience impacts both our brain and our behaviour.

Last week we discussed instincts: mostly learned, deeply engrained reactions to certain stimuli.

Another type of experience we get exposed to very early on is culture.

There are two categories of culture.

1. The creative kind: movies, art, music, museums, theatre;

2. the social kind: family, interactions, relations, language.

While both feed off each other, it is the social culture that influences the creative culture most. Over the next couple of weeks, we will focus more on the social culture.

Culture - a definition

Culture research has been around for centuries.

Isidori of Seville, a scholar from the 7th century, wrote in his encyclopedia “Etymologiae” that humans are not only different in their physical appearance, but also in their mental approach or “content”. Culture.

With the onset of globalization in the 19th century, the field of anthropology examined the variations in practices, values, and beliefs of people. In the late 20th century, culture connected with psychology, biology, and neuroscience.

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines culture as:

or

When we look at culture, we could compare the following social groups:

1. grandparents and grandchildren

2. city vs suburb or country population

3. Country east vs west (e.g. East Germany vs. West Germany)

4. Nation vs nation (Japan vs. US)

5. Organizational culture vs. national culture (this is important)

6. Earth vs Mars (okay, that is far-fetched, but just to make a point here…)

Some examples:

My grandfather never understood my love for hip hop.

People raised in the countryside enjoy silence and nature. People raised in the city enjoy a dynamic lifestyle.

People from high socioeconomics value choice. People from low socioeconomic background find choice stressful.

Risk-taking in the US is admired and supported. Risk-taking in Germany is cautioned.

Different culture impacts perception of the environment, and influences the way we react to certain stimuli. Everyone experienced this once you travelled abroad.

Cultural differences between social groups often result in various dynamics (a better word than “friction”…).

This is culture as well:

Why is this all important?

In the professional world, “culture” is most commonly referred to as “corporate culture”; the culture within a company.

Agreeing on a corporate culture and corporate values aligns collaboration and decision-making.

An employee from Australia and an employee from Austria can agree on the same corporate values, but they both carry distinctive national cultural values from their countries.

As a result, the “corporate culture” of “getting things done” could be carried out in different ways.

The Austrian wants to get it done: “I don’t need to know you well to finish this.”

The Australian wants to get to know you: “Let’s have a coffee, then we can finish this.”

These causes for misinterpretation and misunderstandings, are results of us not being “fine-tuned” to differences in perception or culture.

Unfortunately, cultural differences are rarely taught - a big oversight for any corporation doing international business with an international team.

As you will see from my experience and examples from others, projects with international teams often fail because of cultural misunderstandings. These could be easily avoided with a bit more understanding of each other.

Culture research

There are many great studies on culture out there. I will share examples from global studies with you, but I will most often come back to Hofstede and his team. They have done an immense job, interviewing over 175,000 people around the world. They developed different dimensions alongside which culture within a country is defined and then compared to other nations.

Before you ask what this has to do with neuroscience, let me tell you.

Culture and Neuroscience

When I first moved from Berlin to Nairobi, I found it utterly dusty, chaotic and loud. It stressed me. A year later, noise and chaos were normal, and I even enjoyed it.

I also enjoyed the German orderliness back in Berlin. But I found it slow and annoying.

There are traits from our “core” culture so deeply engrained, it is almost impossible to shake them off.

Studies suggest that “geographical variation in environmental pressures” produce sort of a cultural neural architecture that can be found comparing brains across the same culture (NIH).

Natural environments impact human traits. Natural selection impacts the gene pool and hence indirectly the culture created within these environments.

The US: an example

Research suggests that certain serotonin transporter genes were found to impact whether individuals develop a more “individualistic” (”I am more important than the group”) or “collectivistic” (”The group is more important than the individual”) trait.

People who moved to the States in the 17th / 18th century were all risk-takers and probably higher up on the “individualistic” scale. Who else would leave everything (friends, family etc.), flock halfway around the globe, to a land nobody really knew?

Risk-takers mingled with risk-takers and created a country of innovation, risk-taking and “individualism”.

We know that people who live in individualistic cultures (US) commonly have a decreased amygdala response, i.e. less fearful reactions.

On the other side, collectivistic, group-focused cultures show reduced numbers of anxiety and mood disorders, which are in part connected to serotonin transporters in the brain.

Don’t worry, I won’t nerd further. But this is to show that culture and neuroscience are more interconnected than we might think.

Where are we going from here?

Over the next couple of weeks we will look into each cultural dimensions separately, provide examples and discuss the impact on business, leadership, and decision-making in a personal and business context.

I’d suggest you play around with the country comparison by Hofstede. It is the first link below.

Find my research: culture

Hofstede Cultural Dimensions

Hofstede defined certain criteria, so called dimensions, alongside which he was able to define culture of nations and then compare each country to each other.

Nice to play around and compare the different countries alongside the cultural dimensions. I will revert back to this data set over the upcoming weeks.

(Hofstede Insights)

Why culture matters - a Harvard Business Review Series

This is a great series combining national culture with corporate culture. I bet all of you heard about the saying “culture eats strategy for breakfast” by Peter Drucker.

Often you will find gaps between the theoretical “corporate values” on paper and the actual “culture” of a company. If the culture falls flat, no strategy can save the company.

These couple of pages remind managers of the importance of meaningful corporate culture and values, with some ideas on how to execute them.

(SpencerStuart)

Cultural neuroscience: Progress and Promise

This is a great list of examples showing the connection between cultural dimensions and biological and neuroscientific processes. I will refer to some of these examples over the weeks, given their relation to important cultural frameworks.

(NIH)

Culture Wires the Brain: A Cognitive Neuroscience Perspective

The study combines existing cultural research with neuroimaging, highlighting the differences of neurological structures in the brain between cultures, in the case of this paper Westerners and East Asian cultures.

(NIH)

Find my research: neuroscience

Vitamin B2 and Parkinson’s

This study is interesting as it compares patients from different countries. The results suggest a significant correlation between low levels of bacteria that can synthesis of B vitamins. This can increase neurological inflammation, supporting the development of Parkinson’s.

(Mnews)

How babies learn to breathe

Last week we looked into instinct. One of the questions I tried to understand: is a baby starting to breathe at birth an instinct, and if so, where does it come from?

This area is seemingly not well researched. Potentially because it is difficult to brain scan a baby shortly after birth. I understand.

Studies tried to shed light on this question and suggested the following:

Now you know!

(UC Alberta)

Neuroscience on steroids: 8 examples

Turning off your ability to access long-term memories? Not science-fiction any more.

Cut some genes to avoid brain disease? Potentially possible.

BCI? Well, happening.

Lab-grown brains to understand how brains grow in uterus and identify potential “critical” growth episodes where things could go wrong and later develop Autism? Yes.

Reading through this article, which is from 2021, it is amazing to see how far neuroscience has come. Some of it sounds pretty sci-fi - but isn’t.

Good read for the curious ;-)

(MITReview)

This is for the parents: devices to deal with tantrums 🚨

How tempting: kiddo throws a tanti, calm her down in front of a TV.

Sounds good? Not such a good idea after all.

It does not teach the young child to self-regulate emotions and the older she gets, the more she will rely on external stimuli, like screens, to calm down every time emotions run high.

The brain will learn the loop of overstimulation (anger) to digital stimulation. The early this is implemented the more difficult it will become to break.

Sadly, there plenty of parents shoving kids in front of screens.

It is easy. I get it.

But it does not help the child to develop a connection to emotions or even boredom.

(Frontiers)

On top of tech

Let’s teach robot how to dance

The goal? To make them more human, and with that, increase the acceptance rate. Will this work? Well, look at it yourself:

It is impressive how far we have come. Dance movements require a certain level of balance, which, overall, can make robots more stable and capable. Robots 5 years ago could hardly stand straight carrying a box.

Dancing is an expression of art and culture. But rather than teaching movements, we might give them a proper face, if you ask me.

(UC San Diego)

NeuroAI chipset

You have all heard the stories about crazy energy needs AI systems require for training and operation. Like small town energy consumptions.

No surprise research is racing to find less energy-hungry chips and neural networks to compute the vast amount of data.

I have written a couple of times about neuro-inspired chips. The following research goes into a similar direction, combining knowledge from working memory and learning processes of the brain with digital models.

In trying to mimic neurons to learn themselves about the best way to be utilized and recall data into working memory, the researchers try to reduce the size of the networks, and make it more adjustable, hence smarter.

Will this work? I don’t know. But it is exciting to see the overlap of tech and neuroscience in trying to find better chips to fuel the AI craziness.

(Earth / Study)

Funding news: Roga, REMSpace, CraniUS

Roga, on a mission to develop alternatives for mental healthcare, raised US$1.2mln, from AngelList Fund, amongst others.

RemSpace, focusing on REM dream research, raised US$1mln.

CraniUS raised US$1 mln through grants. Their product is kind of interesting. It a implantable, wireless medical device allowing regular and direct delivery of medicine to the brain. As delivery medication to the brain is difficult. The blood-brain-barrier hinders and substances to enter the brain if taken through infusion or orally. To administer medicine directly to the brain, it needs to be done through the skull. 😑

Misc but not least…

Talking culture today, ain’t we? Hip Hop is probably one of the biggest cultural changes in culture over the past 50 years. Rarely, has there been such an influence on such a wide area of culture. Think music (rap), art (graffiti), dance (hip hop / breakdance). The source of it all? The Bronx.

I found a neat little documentary on Hip Hop as a culture - straight from 2001. If you are not into the music, it’s worth watching to remind you what TV looked like almost 25 years ago.

Mic drop!

Have a great rest of the weekend.

Alex