Paul Mason

Neuroanthropology

“La réponse dépasse largement les objectifs de ce livre: elle touche
au domaine fascinant mais encore trop peu exploré des liens qui
unissent les neurosciences à l’anthropologie sociale et à l’ethnologie.”
Jean-Pierre Changeux, L’homme Neuronal, (1983:372)


Contemporary physics has shown that when you observe a system you change the system. The act of observation, annotation and interpretation, by its very nature, constitutes that you become part of the system, thereby changing it. Neuroanthropology is the co-phenomenological neuroethology of Homo sapiens sapiens. It is the study of intersubjectively experienced construals irremediably determined in time and space by socially embedded, environmentally situated, embodied brains.

Figure 1: Neuroanthropology, as the study of the brain-culture-environment nexus, can be conceptualised as shown in the above Venn-diagram.

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Autobiography

I first became aware of Neuroanthropology in 2002 while completing a neuroscience major at the University of Melbourne. In order to make up subject points, I requested special permission to study medical anthropology. I had a particular interest to complement my major with subjects outside of my discipline. I became quickly enraptured with the field of anthropology and saw the tremendous benefits the anthropological perspective had for brain science. I started exploring the different fields of anthropology; biological anthropology, ethnobotany, psychological anthropology, physical anthropology etc. I googled ‘Neuroanthropology’ and stumbled across old articles from the Neuroanthropology Network Newsletter edited by Charles Laughlin. The concepts and ideas were intriguing and it was clear that there was plenty of room for development.

Later that year I undertook a Summer Research Scholarship at the Research School of Biological Sciences, Australian National University (ANU). It was there that I met Juan Dominguez who was undertaking a Summer Research Scholarship at the Centre for the Mind, ANU. As it happened, Juan had just completed his honours dissertation on the topic of neuroanthropology. Juan and I struck an immediate friendship with common interests in martial arts, brain research, and music.

During that summer, I worked on the brains of honeybees under the supervision of Dr Ryszard Maleszka. Dr Maleszka, who has become both friend and mentor, introduced me to the ideas of Gerald Edelman. Together with Juan, Dr Maleszka helped me understand the evolutionary dynamics of Neural Darwinism. That summer also provided me with my first opportunity to study Pencak Silat which has now become a component of my current cognitive ethnographic fieldwork.

After that summer, Juan went on to commence his PhD at the University of Melbourne under the supervision of Dr Douglas Lewis. I travelled overseas for a year, undertaking a research internship under the supervision of Docteur Paul Klosen at the Laboratoire de Neurobiologie des Rythmes, Universite Louis Pasteur, Strasbourg, France.

Juan and I stayed in close email contact throughout 2003. It was to prove an excellent year for me to freely develop my own ideas in Neuroanthropology. It was there that I began writing my first academic paper: The Receiving Context: Neuroanthropology. The title of that piece was inspired by Gregory Bateson’s book, Ecology of Mind. The article was published in 2005 (Bateson regrettably did not get a mention in the final edit).

I owe a great deal of gratitude to Dr Paul Klosen, my supervisor in France for patiently teaching me the experimental rigours of morphophysiology, showing me how to fly kites and introducing me to the field of Neuroethology and the ideas of James L. Goodson and Andrew H. Bass. In the study of animals, Goodson & Bass (2001) advocate: “a pluralistic neuroethological approach – one which recognises not only the importance of structural and behavioural characters, but of life history and ecological variables as well”

I came to envision Neuroanthropology as the Pluralistic Neuroethology of Homo sapiens sapiens. Neuroanthropology, as a field of research concerning the study of humans, requires a different approach to Neuroethology. Humans studying humans requires theory and methods that account for our co-phenomenological experiences. Our involvement and perception of the system-under-investigation can not be controlled for by using the same experimental methods as neuroethology. By examining and thus interacting in a human cultural system, we alter and inadvertantly change that system. The participant-observation methods and analytic-reflexivity of anthropology offers solutions to such problems and extends the ethological to the ethnological.

During 2004, I completed my honours in Psychophysics while concurrently undertaking a Graduate Certificate in Arts(Anthropology) part-time. I was able to discuss research concepts, theories and methods with Juan as well as train Capoeira with him on the University of Melbourne lawns. I completed my Anthropology studies in 2005, saved up some money and returned to Europe for a couple of months before commencing a PhD in Psychology.

The first year of my PhD was undertaken at a Psychology laboratory where I had the opportunity to interact with some brilliant scholars as well as perform cognitive ethnographic fieldwork in Contemporary Dance. My interest in the project stemmed from the fact that dance is created by the embodied brain, influenced by culture and shaped and inspired by our relationship to, and our perception of, the environment. The experience was very enriching and deepened my understanding of multidisciplinary research. At the end of the year, my research interests led me to transfer to an Anthropology department where I have been able to pursue a cross-cultural comparison of Capoeira and Pencak Silat. This research integrates dance anthropology, ethnomusicology and choreomusicology in order to investigate the inter-evolutionary and inter-developmental relationships between embodied brains, socio-cultural processes and the physical environment.

It may be too much for contemporary neuroanthropology to bridge the gap between neuronal mechanisms and cultural processes. It might be more honest to call my research interests psychophysical anthropology. However, my ultimate goal is to assist in developing a Neuroanthropology that can ask the what, the how and the why of human behaviour. It is my hope that with assistance from my friends and research collaborators, that we will come closer to approaching the answers.

Current Research

My current research uses geographically discrete socio-cultural activities to study the relationship between brain, culture and the environment.

Figure 2: Brain-Culture-Environment interactions : Music, dance and language are socio-cultural activities situated at the intersection of brain-culture-environment interactions. These activities are socio-ecologically facilitated, socio-culturally orchestrated and socio-historically instituted. They are propagated by embodied, socially-embedded brains as well as the accumulation of cultural artefacts. Music, culture and dance are created by the reiterative causality between brain, culture and the environment.