PSY 3325 - Cultural Neuoscience

Credits: 3 hrs

This is a seminar course that exposes students to field of Cultural Neuroscience as an emerging research discipline that investigates cultural variation in psychological, neural and genomic processes. This seminar will focus on presenting information on the bidirectional relationship of culture, genes, brain, and mind, and their emergent behaviors. Cultural Neuroscience integrates theory and methods from anthropology, cultural psychology, neuroscience and neurogenetics. Discussions will address the problems of defining culture and culturally appropriate experimental tasks, comparing neuroimaging data acquired from different populations, epigenetic processes, neuro-economics, and generally identifying the sociocultural influences on the brain. Implications of cultural neuroscience research for addressing and explaining current issues in population health disparities and other social problems will also be discussed.
Pre-requisite(s): PSY 1301 and upper level