Embrained Normativity: How Cultural Norms Can Modulate Neural Correlates in The Brain

Cultural neuroscience is a new discipline that investigates how cultural norms and practices affect brain neural activities and structures.Some of these studies have focused on the interaction between cultural/ normative self-construal and the neural correlates of the representation of the self in the brain.In this article, I discuss some studies on the cultural neuroscience of the self to show that cultural norms can reshape and modulate brain structures responsible for the representation of the self and others.By conceptualizing the results of these studies as embrained normativity, I argue that norms and values of a specific culture can be traceable within the brain, implying that norms not only reside in the intersubjective mental sphere but also diffuse into the brain.The concept of embrained normativity may open new ground for re-interpreting both the Hegelian idea of second nature and the results of the self's cultural neuroscience.