The Neurohumanities: a new interdisciplinary paradigm or just another neuroword?

 Thelatest issue ofNeuron has published five thematic “NeuroView” papers proposing that neuroscience can augment our understanding of classically brain-free fields like art, literature, and theology. Two of the articles discuss the relatively established pursuits ofneuroaesthetics (Iigaya et al., 2020) andneuromorality/moral decision-making (Kelly& O ' Connell, 2020). Another article outlines the bare bones of an ambitious search for the neural correlates of collective memory, or the “Cultural Engram” (Dudai, 2020):I consider human cultures as biocultural ‘‘supraorganisms’’ that can store memory as distributed experience-dependent, behaviorally relevant representations over hundreds and thousands of years. Similar to other memory systems, these supraorganisms encode, consolidate, store, modify, and express memory items in the concerted activi ty of multiple types and tokens of sub-components of the system.  . . .  ...the memory traces are encoded in large distributed assemblies, composed of individual brains, intragenerational and intergenerational interacting brains, and multiple types of artifacts that interact with brains.The concept of the “Cultural Engram” isnotnew, but a research program that incorporates an animal model for cultural memory is indeed novel (regardless of its potential validity):The search for the cultural engram ... must be paired with productive model systems. The human cultural engram is awaiting its supraor...

Source: The Neurocritic - November 30, 2020 Category: Neuroscience Authors: The Neurocritic Source Type: blogs