The Cultural Brain

Within the Cultural Brain research group, we investigate how cultural inventions – such as written words, numbers, music, and belief systems – shape our mind and brain.

Our research is divided into three themes (the Literate Brain, the Predictive Brain, and the Mutimodal Brain), each of which provides us with a unique window for exploring the culturally-shaped mind.

We use behavioural measures, functional and structural neuroimaging techniques, and computational modelling to help us answer the central question: To what extent does culture determine what it means to think as a human?

This research group is part of the Psychology of Language Department (MPI for Psycholinguistics) and the Department for Linguistic and Cultural Evolution at the MPI for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig (Germany).