Broadening the Scope of Cultural Neuroscience

Chiao, Cheon, Pornpattananangkul, Mrazek, and Blizinsky offer a comprehensive review of cultural neuroscience research. For such a young field, cultural neuroscience has made great strides in the effort to understand the neural and genetic mechanisms underlying cultural differences in psychology. Here, we pose a set of questions that, if addressed in the future, may help develop the field. First, can cultural neuroscientists more deeply probe how environmental factors, such as pathogen threats, may have influenced genetic selection and, in turn, cultural differences in psychology (i.e., the culture–gene coevolutionary theory)? Second, can cultural neuroscientists help unravel whether and how aspects of cultural psychology are susceptible to change? Third, what can a cultural neuroscience perspective give back to other, related disciplines such as social cognitive neuroscience, genetics, and psychology more broadly?