DATE: 1-3:30 p.m. April 16, 2010.

EVENT: A public forum at Rackham Amphitheatre at the University of Michigan. Keynote addresses by psychologists Hazel Markus of Stanford University and Michael Posner of the University of Oregon initiate a three-day symposium on the emerging field of cultural neuroscience, which seeks to bridge the natural and social sciences.

Co-sponsored by the U-M Center for Culture, Mind, and the Brain; the U-M Evolution and Human Adaptation Program; and the Research Center for Group Dynamics at the U-M Institute for Social Research.

Markus is concerned with how gender, ethnicity, religion, social class, cohort, and region or country of national origin may influence thought and feeling. Posner is known for developing measures showing how the operations of the mind can be mapped onto activation patterns in the brain, linking the psychology of the mind to the biology of brain function.

“In recent years, it has become increasingly clear that although the brain is biologically based, it is also socially shaped and conditioned as it functions in dynamically changing cultural worlds,” said U-M psychologist Shinobu Kitayama, who directs the U-M Center for Culture, Mind, and the Brain, and who helped organize the conference with U-M psychologist Anne Petersen.

“With this conference, and a recent related conference at Stanford University, we begin to create a network of social scientists and neuroscientists across the world to facilitate collaborative research in this exciting new field,” Kitayama said.

PLACE: Rackham Amphitheatre, 915 East Washington, Ann Arbor, 48109-1070.

CONTACT: Natalie Dushane, (734) 764-4112, nadushan@umich.edu.