Culture and the Brain

Medical Anthropology ANTH 2301 Culture and the Brain In both medicine and culture, study on the human brain is very interesting. The brain, its functioning, and its health are conceptualised differently in different cultures. Systems of biomedicine and ethnomedicine have diverse perspectives on human physiology, and they usually have somewhat different explanations for how the brain functions in psychology and neurology. Both of these explanatory frameworks and how they affect treatment are of interest to anthropologists. Medical anthropologists are especially interested in the relationship between psychology and biology and health, the cultural stigma associated with mental health, addiction, syndromes that are exclusive to a culture, and stress-related illnesses and experiences. These subjects were combined by Daniel Lende and Greg Downey under the umbrella of neuroanthropology, a newly recognised field that studies the connection between culture and the brain. The debate of the cultural systems model brought to light how cultural perspectives on psychology vary greatly. Biomedical societies are more likely to use psychological methods to mental health issues. There are situations where anthropologists are needed to promote the use of psychology and psychiatry in different cultural contexts. A medical anthropologist's task is to persuade those who reject mental health concerns that treating mental health conditions is preferable than doing nothing about them. Rebecca Clay wrote on psychology's gradual but eventual acceptance in India in a 2002 essay. In this instance, psychological therapies and diagnostics were combined with Indian medical thought to eventually normalise and embrace psychology. This culturally grounded road towards normalisation highlights the necessity for medical anthropologists to have a nuanced approach and cultural awareness. Understanding the subtle cultural differences is particularly crucial to comprehending what anthropologists refer to as culturebound disorders. The term "culture-bound syndromes" describes the distinctive ways in which a given culture interprets mental illness's physical and/or social symptoms. Because it is not an illness with a scientific basis that has been found in other populations, the ailment is referred to as a "cultural syndrome." Susto, a condition common in Latino communities in the Americas, is one well-known example. Susto, initially identified by Rubel, O'Nell, and ColladoArdon (1991), is characterised by tension, anxiety, or terror brought on by seeing traumatic events occur to those in your immediate vicinity. Indigenous American communities in the Americas were the first to experience this panic attack-like ailment, which manifested as a fever, anorexia, and anxiousness among other symptoms. It was believed to be a spiritual attack on individuals. But non-Western nations are not the only ones that experience cultural syndromes. Anthropologist Caroline Giles Banks (1992) said that one of the best examples of a culture-bound condition is anorexia nervosa, an eating disorder in which a person starves themselves to maintain their thinness in line with American and European beauty standards. Anorexia nervosa only manifests in certain societies when women and men are subjected to particular demands about weight and appearance. However, the illness spreads along with these beauty standards as a result of globalisation and the dissemination of media from various cultures. Cultural syndromes are as varied as human civilization itself, and they are not limited to societies that favour biomedicine or ethnomedicine. A similar idea that is becoming more and more popular in psychology is called cultural conceptions of distress, or CCD. These ideas "refer to ways that cultural groups experience, understand, and communicate suffering, behavioural problems, or troubling thoughts and emotions," according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) 5 (American Psychiatric Association 2013). To sum up, CCD refers to the ways in which a culture conceptualises and explains the distinct physical and/or social symptoms that accompany mental illness. Medical anthropologists' main tool for studying health is the psychobiological dynamic of health, which is the quantifiable impact of human psychology on physical health. The psychobiological dynamic of health aids anthropologists in assessing the effectiveness of medical interventions that might not be consistent with indigenous cultural practices. For instance, if participants in a ritual think it has healing power, ritual healing can have a genuine, quantifiable impact on them as well as the patient. Similarly, receiving holy water blessings or having a priest pray over you can have a powerful therapeutic impact on individuals who share your cultural belief in the efficacy of such procedures. Psychological belief confers effectiveness on healing. The placebo/nocebo effect demonstrates how the same idea applies to biomedicine. Of course, believing in and of itself does not completely eliminate the positive or negative effects of medication or any other drug. Stress is a human universal and its impacts are another area where psychology and health meet. It is true that there is scientific evidence linking mental stress to physical illness. Anthropologist Robert Sapolsky's (2004) research examines how the human body has evolved to use, adapt to, and recover from stress. According to his study, stress drives people to their boundaries—both mental and physical—and that these limits vary from person to person. It also shows that pushing oneself to the limit might lead to progress. Unlike other ape species, humans are able to adjust to stress, a trait that most likely evolved during millions of years of evolution. Although stress has helped human bodies adapt and has even led to growth in certain cases, chronic stress is not something that humans were designed to handle for long periods of time. The high incidence of stress-related illnesses like heart disease brought on by chronic stress demonstrates the limits of even evolution's ability to adapt to protracted stresses. Medical anthropologists have also conducted extensive research on addiction, examining the biological and cultural factors that lead to addiction. Addiction may take many different forms and impact several aspects of health. In her 2010 book The Pastoral Clinic: Addiction and Dispossession along the Rio Grande, medical anthropologist Angela Garcia addresses the topic of addiction by examining the relationship between drug addiction and treatment options and factors such as race, class, immigrant status, and dispossession. She follows the path of several patients and the elements that led to their addiction, concentrating on a tiny hamlet on the Rio Grande and particularly a clinic supposed to cure addiction inside that area. Her research draws attention to the patients' status as outsiders, minorities, and immigrants, which keeps many of them from being reintegrated into society. Analysing the impact of homelessness and dispossession on social health, João Biehl's study Vita: Life in a Zone of Social Abandonment (2103) focuses on the function of drugs in the zone under scrutiny. His examination of vida, a location where people are "left to die" when their mental illness or addiction becomes intolerable, highlights the challenges faced by those who are abandoned there as well as the cultural ramifications of addiction and mental health issues on Brazilian culture. The significance of drugs is emphasised in both pieces, which also examine how societies stigmatise admitting one has a problem and seeking help, as well as how they symbolically characterise problematic drug use and addiction. The pieces also examine the justification and comprehension of drug use, showing how drugs alter the biochemistry of the brain as well as how the substances are seen by the human mind and influence one another.