Recent technological developments allow us to peer into the mechanics and dynamics of our brain and nervous system with increasing ease and depth. Scientific and public perceptions of impending miraculous solutions (or, alternatively, the end of humankind as we know it) have rippled forth from these new technologies and associated research projects. A holistic anthropological view provides a cooling tonic to these heated misperceptions.

Specifically, a radical developmental systems view that refuses to assign a priori causal primacy to genes, neurons, social interactions, or institutions shows the brain to be not only enculturated (affected in structure and function by culture) but also always “in culture”; at once a product of, participant in, and creator of sociocultural systems.

sociocultural systems are highly evolved and self-stabilizing, with multiple ways of enabling or limiting individual behavior that have co-evolved with the human brain