Abstract
Converging behavioral and functional neuroimaging evidence indicates that East Asian and Western individuals have different orientations for processing information that may stem from contrasting cultural values. In this cross-cultural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) study, we used voxel-based morphometry (VBM) approach to investigate culture-related and individual differences of independent-interdependent orientation in structural brain volume between 57 Taiwanese and 56 Western participants. Each participant’s degree of endorsement of independent and interdependent cultural value was assessed by their self-report on the Singelis Self-Construal Scale (SCS). Behaviorally, Taiwanese rated higher SCS scores than Westerners in interdependent value and Westerners rated higher SCS scores than Taiwanese in independent value. The VBM results demonstrated that Western participants showed greater gray matter (GM) volume in the fronto-parietal network, whereas Taiwanese participants showed greater regional volume in temporal and occipital regions. Our findings provide supportive evidence that socio-cultural experiences of learned independent-interdependent orientations may play a role in regional brain volumes. However, strategic differences in cognition, genetic variation, and/or modulations of other environmental factors should also be considered to interpret such culture-related effects and potential individual differences.
Highlights
There is a growing interest in how differences in culturally-based social and cognitive environments influence the way people construe themselves and perceive the visual world
To examine culture-related differences in regional gray-matter volume, we first performed a whole-brain voxel-based morphometry (VBM) analysis to identify the significant differences in the gray-matter volume of brain regions between two cultural groups using Threshold-Free Cluster Enhancement (TFCE) method with family-wise error (FWE)-corrected threshold of p < 0.05
Significant culture-related differences in brain regions between Taiwanese and Western groups are illustrated in Figure 1 and Table 2
Summary
There is a growing interest in how differences in culturally-based social and cognitive environments influence the way people construe themselves and perceive the visual world. Far, systematic culture-related differences influenced by sociocultural values can be observed between East Asians and Westerners with respect to cognitive function, such as visual perception, memory, attention, and reasoning (Nisbett et al, 2001; Nisbett and Masuda, 2003; Goh and Park, 2009; Park and Huang, 2010; Schwartz et al, 2014; Na et al, 2017), as well as psychosocial processes such as relationality, social judgment, and self-concept (Markus and Kitayama, 1991; Han and Northoff, 2008; Kitayama and Uskul, 2011; Huang and Park, 2013)
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