Kultur är avgörande för verklighetsuppfattning

Culture can shape your view of the world, the saying goes. And it might be more than just a saying: a new study suggests that culture may shape the way our brains process visual information.

Researchers found that the brains of older East Asian people respond less strongly to changes in the foreground of images than those of their Western counterparts. They suggest this difference is due to an increased emphasis on the background, or context, of images in some Asian cultures.

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The researchers note that previous studies tracking eye movement have found that East Asians are more likely than Westerners to pay attention to the background of a picture.

Park says her new findings, along with her earlier brain scan work that focused only on elderly volunteers, are "the first studies to show that culture is sculpting the brain". ¹

Vi "väljer" inte vilka vi är, utan är naturliga produkter av det folk och den kultur vi tillhör.