In 1906, Ramon y Cajal described the brain as “a world consisting of a number of unexplored continents and great stretches of unknown territory” (Santiago, 1920). Nearly a century later, human neuroscience researchers have sought to map the structural and functional features of the brain, much as Magellen in 1520 circumnavigated the globe discovering for the first time great stretches of ocean and land that compose our physical world. Yet many opportunities and challenges in cultural neuroscience make much of this contemporary scientific journey ongoing and perpetual. For instance, scientific models depend on identifying and discovering evidence for causal mechanisms—such as how genetic and experiential factors constrain and evoke neural development within and across generations; yet the technology or access to technology for testing causal mechanisms in gene, brain, or behavior remains limited. Novel biological theories such as culture-gene coevolutionary theory provide a fresh lens for contemporary psychologists and neuroscientists to view the human mind and brain as a by-product not only of gene–environment interactions but also of human culture. What is human culture? The notion of human diversity has compelled intellectual inquiry for centuries and at the nexus of anthropology and psychology, scholars agree that at minimum, culture refers the sets of values, practices, and beliefs that define groups and people within and across geography. Culture is both created and transmitted by human behavior; as such culture–gene coevolutionary theory argues that cultural traits, like genetic traits, can be selected on by evolutionary forces. Furthermore, when culture is created, this niche construction can alter environmental factors or pressures that interact with genetic mechanisms in the production of psychological and biological processes that give rise to human behavior. In broadest stroke, the study of culture has progressed in leaps and bounds in ways that enable us to better understand how to conceptualize and study the how and why of human nature. In our target article, we presented from a historical perspective conceptual developments that led to the emergence of cultural neuroscience as a field, and articulated a framework for examining cultural and biological interactions of human behavior. We then presented empirical advances in how culture affects neural mechanisms of cognitive, affective, and social processes as well as the role that culture–gene interactions across evolutionary, developmental, and situational timescales play in shaping mental and neural architecture. As the field of cultural neuroscience is still in its infancy, there are key constraints on our existing knowledge and empirical approaches to how cultural influences on the human brain are studied, and the commentaries to our target article are testament that scientific ingenuity and conscientiousness will simultaneously guide us toward better understanding the legacy of cultural and genetic inheritance on mind, brain, and behavior.

中文翻译：

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文化神经科学中的限制、催化剂和协同进化：对评论的回复

1906 年，Ramon y Cajal 将大脑描述为“一个由许多未探索的大陆和大片未知领土组成的世界”（圣地亚哥，1920 年）。近一个世纪后，人类神经科学研究人员试图绘制大脑的结构和功能特征，就像麦哲伦在 1520 年环球航行时首次发现构成我们物理世界的大片海洋和陆地一样。然而，文化神经科学中的许多机遇和挑战使这一当代科学之旅在很大程度上得以持续和永恒。例如，科学模型依赖于识别和发现因果机制的证据——例如遗传和经验因素如何限制和激发代内和跨代的神经发育；然而，用于测试基因、大脑或行为因果机制的技术或获得的技术仍然有限。新的生物学理论，如文化-基因协同进化理论，为当代心理学家和神经科学家提供了一个全新的视角，他们将人类的思想和大脑视为不仅是基因-环境相互作用的副产品，也是人类文化的副产品。什么是人类文化？几个世纪以来，人类多样性的概念一直迫使人们进行知识探究，在人类学和心理学的联系中，学者们一致认为，文化至少是指定义地理内外的群体和人民的价值观、实践和信仰集。文化是由人类行为创造和传播的；因此，文化-基因共同进化理论认为，文化特征，如遗传特征，可以由进化力量选择。此外，当文化被创造出来时，这种生态位结构可以改变环境因素或压力，这些因素或压力与产生人类行为的心理和生物过程的遗传机制相互作用。概括地说，文化研究取得了突飞猛进的进步，使我们能够更好地理解如何概念化和研究人性的方式和原因。在我们的目标文章中，我们从历史的角度介绍了导致文化神经科学作为一个领域出现的概念发展，并阐明了一个框架来检查人类行为的文化和生物相互作用。然后，我们介绍了文化如何影响认知、情感、和社会过程，以及跨越进化、发展和情境时间尺度的文化-基因相互作用在塑造心理和神经结构中所起的作用。由于文化神经科学领域仍处于起步阶段，我们现有的知识和经验方法对如何研究文化对人类大脑的影响存在关键限制，我们目标文章的评论证明科学独创性和尽责性将同时存在引导我们更好地了解文化和基因遗传对思想、大脑和行为的影响。