Wexler, B. E.( 2008). Brain and culture: Neurobiology, ideology, and social change. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 307 pp.
Book Review: Brain and Culture
Stephen M. Ryan
Wexler, B. E.( 2008). Brain and culture: Neurobiology, ideology, and social change. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 307 pp.
It is difficult to imagine two more complex topics to bring together in a single volume than culture and the brain. Between them they are responsible for the deaths of scores of forests and the re-arrangement of countless electrons. Bruce Wexler, a Yale psychiatrist, certainly knows his brain science, at least as the field existed ten years ago when the book was written. However, his attempts to deal with culture, that most difficult of concepts, while always enlightening, often come across as bizarre and idiosyncratic.
His argument can be stated quite briefly: a child’ s brain is shaped by the environment, both physical and social, in which the child grows up, but, after a certain point the brain becomes less susceptible to outside influences and from then on focuses its efforts on trying to re-shape the physical and social world around it to match its understanding of how the world should be. Wexler lays out this thesis in the introduction and then spends the next three chapters supporting it. Methodically, he summarises study after study to build his case, citing both animal and human experiments. He first explains the effects of sensory deprivation on the growing brain and then shows how specific sensory input shapes thought processes. The“ culture” here is the physical environment, the actions and reactions of mothers to their offspring, and the more distant assumptions of the wider society.
This part of the book is impressive for its thoroughness and lucidity. Wexler clearly knows the experimental data and deploys it in a way that is both accessible and persuasive. Technical explanations and methodological details are omitted in favour of clear summaries and forensic organisation. His goal is to convince the reader of his central thesis and in this he succeeds: nobody could read the first three chapters of the book without believing that there is strong evidence for the role of environmental factors in moulding the growing brain. To paraphrase Wexler, an inner world is created which mirrors the outer environment in which it has been nurtured.
And then the whole process goes into reverse. During adolescence the brain becomes less plastic, less open to keeping itself in tune with a changing external environment.
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