Culture, Mind & Brain is a new seminar series, hosted by the Culture, Mind & Brain Program of the Division of Social & Transcultural Psychiatry and the Healthy Brains Healthy Lives Initiative. The goal is for students and researchers of neuroscience, psychiatry, anthropology and other areas related to mental health to discuss bodies of research and work in progress (experimental and theoretical) that relate to neuroscience and society, and mind, brain and culture. We will discuss topics such as how to design multidisciplinary methodologies that integrate social, ethical and cultural contexts into experimental studies of brain structure, function and development; we will analyze the potentials and limits of brain data for health and social policy; and critically assess translations of brain data into popular science pieces.
TITLE: Enculturated Minds and Brains: Questioning a Familiar Philosophical Picture
PRESENTER: Daniel D. Hutto, BA, MPhil, DPhil
DATE: January 21, 2021
TIME: 3:00pm - 5:00pm
LOCATION: ZOOM Registration Required
For more information, please e-mail samuel.veissiere [at] mcgill.ca (Professor Samuel Veissière).

2021
Date | Speaker | Title |
January 7 | Dietrich Stout, PhD | Culture, Mind, and Brain in Human Evolution: An Extended Evolutionary Perspective on Paleolithic Toolmaking as Embodied Practice |
2020
Date | Speaker | Title |
November 5 | Georg Northoff, MD, PhD | Cultural similarity and differences between selves and brains: a novel approach |
October 29 | Shinobu Kitayama, PhD | Mutual Constitution of Culture and the Mind: Insights from Cultural Neuroscience |
October 1 | Carol M. Worthman, PhD | Being There: Human Ecology, Diversity, and the Vicissitudes of Empathy |
September 24 | Laurence Kirmayer, MD | Co-constructing Culture, Mind, and Brain |
January 23 | Kenneth J. Zucker, PhD, CPsych | Children and Adolescents with Gender Dysphoria: Some Contemporary Research and Clinical Issues |
2019
Date | Speaker | Title |
November 28 | Suze Berkhout, MD, PhD, FRCPC | Grappling with Cure/Harm: Feminist STS, Critical Disability Studies Meets Placebo and Nocebo Studies |
November 7 | David Dupuis, PhD | The Socialization of Hallucinations: Cultural Priors, Social Interactions and Contextual Factors in the use of Ayahuasca |
April 25 | Laura Otis, PhD | The Insidious Work of Emotion Metaphors |
March 28 | Jacqueline Sullivan, PhD | Coordinating Scientific Perspectives in Experimental Contexts: Lessons from Translational Cognitive Neuroscience and the RDOC Project |
March 14 | Dietrich Stout, PhD | Human Evolutionary Neuroscience: Life in the Technological Niche |
February 28 | Rob Boddice, MA, PhD, FRHistS | Biocultural History and the Turn to Experience |
January 31 | Bican Polat, Ph.D. | Cerebralizing Attachment: How Have Parent-Child Relationships Come to be Explained as Brain Facts? |
2018
Date | Speaker | Title |
December 6 | Elizabeth Pienkos, Psy.D. | Existential Orientations and Schizophrenia: Personhood, Pathology, and Culture |
October 25 | Dr. Jesse Proudfoot | Traumatic Landscapes: Two Geographies of Addiction |
August 9 | Professor Maria Kozhevnikov | The Effect of Vajrayana Buddhism on Enhancing Human Cognition |
May 4 | Professor Fernando Vidal | Phenomenology of the Locked-in Syndrome |
March 15 | Dr. Ana Gómez-Carrillo | Operationalizing Multi-level Loops in Affective Disorders |
February 15 | Professor Samuel Veissière & Moriah Stendel | Hypernatural Monitoring: A Social Rehearsal Account of Smartphone Addiction |
February 8 | Michael Lifshitz | Suggestion as a mechanism in contemplative practice |
January 25 | Jay Olson, PhD Candidate | Placebo machines, the culture of neuroscience, and the power of suggestion |
January 11 | Maxwell Ramstead & Vincent Laliberté | How Can the Social Sciences Contribute to the Neurosciences? |