The Foundation for Psychocultural Research (The FPR) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization based in Los Angeles that supports and advances interdisciplinary and integrative research and training on interactions of culture, neuroscience, psychiatry, and psychology, with an emphasis on cultural processes as central. The primary objective is to help articulate and support the creation of transformative paradigms that address issues of fundamental clinical and social concern.
The FPR was founded in December 1999 with a gift from Robert Lemelson, [1] a documentary filmmaker and psychological anthropologist on the faculty of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). The FPR supports research and other scholarly activities that encourage integrative approaches by bringing together experts from the neurosciences, psychology, psychiatry, and anthropology.
Participants in the FPR's inaugural interdisciplinary workshop at Ojai in June 2001 advocated research strategies that recognize and integrate multiple levels of analysis – from biological processes like postpartum olfactory learning, to psychological concepts like attachment, to social, cultural, economic, and political conditions affecting mother-infant interactions – and provide a better understanding of culture and context, including local variations in environments, behaviors, beliefs, and experiences.
The FPR was a key supporter of the FPR-UCLA Center for Culture, Brain, and Development (CBD) and the FPR-Hampshire College Program in Culture, Brain, and Development. The FPR CBD programs were designed to foster integrative, cross-disciplinary research that focuses on how culture and context interact with brain development. In 2009 the FPR created a program for Culture, Brain, Development, and Mental Health (CBDMH). The primary objective of CBDMH, which was co-directed by psychological anthropologist Doug Hollan of UCLA and cultural psychologist Steve López of USC, was to establish a strong program in cultural psychiatry, with an emphasis on integrating neuroscience and social science perspectives. The research initiative was based around ongoing, sustainable field sites and programs in various locations across the globe. A training component was embedded within each of the ongoing research projects.
Through a series of planning workshops and conferences, the FPR continues to bring together scholars, researchers, and clinicians with overlapping interests to think across disciplinary boundaries in order to address social and clinical issues. To date, the FPR has hosted six international, interdisciplinary conferences at UCLA: (1) Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: Biological, Clinical, and Cultural Approaches to Trauma's Effects (13–15 December 2002; (2) Four Dimensions of Childhood: Brain, Mind, Culture, and Time (11–13 February 2005); (3) Seven Dimensions of Emotion (30 March–1 April 2007); (4) Cultural and Biological Contexts of Psychiatric Disorder: Implications for Diagnosis and Treatment (22–24 January 2010); (5) Culture, Mind, and Brain: Emerging Concepts, Methods, and Applications 19–20 October 2012); and (6) A Critical Moment: Sex/Gender Research at the Intersections of Culture, Brain, and Behavior (23–24 October 2015).
Participants from these meetings have contributed papers to three published volumes linking several fields, including developmental psychobiology, cultural and biological anthropology, the study of psychological trauma, transcultural psychiatry, and social neuroscience: (1) Understanding Trauma: Integrating Biological, Clinical, and Cultural Perspectives (Cambridge University Press, 2007), edited by cultural psychiatrist Laurence Kirmayer (McGill University), Robert Lemelson, and physician/neuroscientist Mark Barad (UCLA); (2) Formative Experiences: The Interaction of Caregiving, Culture, and Developmental Psychobiology (Cambridge University Press, 2010), edited by biocultural anthropologist Carol M. Worthman (Emory University), developmental psychobiologist Paul M. Plotsky (Emory University), child psychiatrist Daniel Schechter (Université de Genève), and FPR project director Constance A. Cummings; and (3) Re-Visioning Psychiatry: Cultural Phenomenology, Critical Neuroscience, and Global Mental Health (Cambridge University Press, 2015), edited by Laurence Kirmayer (McGill University), Robert Lemelson, and Constance A. Cummings
The FPR is currently focusing on Culture, Mind, and Brain (CMB) research. CMB is an integrative approach to understanding human evolution, cognition, emotion, self, agency, ritual, religion, and other concepts that are not confined to any one scientific discipline. Crucially, advances in one discipline can redefine work in others, compelling researchers to bridge disciplines with new models that depict interactions between brain, mind, development, the social world, and cultural diversity.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to neuroscience:
Behavioral neuroscience, also known as biological psychology, biopsychology, or psychobiology, is the application of the principles of biology to the study of physiological, genetic, and developmental mechanisms of behavior in humans and other animals.
The Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience (IoPPN) is a research institution dedicated to discovering what causes mental illness and diseases of the brain. In addition, its aim is to help identify new treatments for them and ways to prevent them in the first place. The IoPPN is a faculty of King's College London, England, previously known as the Institute of Psychiatry (IoP).
Neuropsychiatry or Organic Psychiatry is a branch of medicine that deals with psychiatry as it relates to neurology, in an effort to understand and attribute behavior to the interaction of neurobiology and social psychology factors. Within neuropsychiatry, the mind is considered "as an emergent property of the brain", whereas other behavioral and neurological specialties might consider the two as separate entities. Neuropsychiatry preceded the current disciplines of psychiatry and neurology, which previously had common training, however, those disciplines have subsequently diverged and are typically practiced separately.
Social neuroscience is an interdisciplinary field devoted to understanding the relationship between social experiences and biological systems. Humans are fundamentally a social species, rather than solitary. As such, Homo sapiens create emergent organizations beyond the individual—structures that range from dyads, families, and groups to cities, civilizations, and cultures. In this regard, studies indicate that various social influences, including life events, poverty, unemployment and loneliness can influence health related biomarkers. The term "social neuroscience" can be traced to a publication entitled "Social Neuroscience Bulletin" which was published quarterly between 1988 and 1994. The term was subsequently popularized in an article by John Cacioppo and Gary Berntson, published in the American Psychologist in 1992. Cacioppo and Berntson are considered as the legitimate fathers of social neuroscience. Still a young field, social neuroscience is closely related to affective neuroscience and cognitive neuroscience, focusing on how the brain mediates social interactions. The biological underpinnings of social cognition are investigated in social cognitive neuroscience.
Psychological anthropology is an interdisciplinary subfield of anthropology that studies the interaction of cultural and mental processes. This subfield tends to focus on ways in which humans' development and enculturation within a particular cultural group—with its own history, language, practices, and conceptual categories—shape processes of human cognition, emotion, perception, motivation, and mental health. It also examines how the understanding of cognition, emotion, motivation, and similar psychological processes inform or constrain our models of cultural and social processes. Each school within psychological anthropology has its own approach.
Cross-cultural psychiatry is a branch of psychiatry concerned with the cultural context of mental disorders and the challenges of addressing ethnic diversity in psychiatric services. It emerged as a coherent field from several strands of work, including surveys of the prevalence and form of disorders in different cultures or countries; the study of migrant populations and ethnic diversity within countries; and analysis of psychiatry itself as a cultural product.
Allan N. Schore is an American psychologist and researcher in the field of neuropsychology.
Polyvagal theory is a collection of unproven, evolutionary, neuroscientific, and psychological constructs pertaining to the role of the vagus nerve in emotion regulation, social connection and fear response, introduced in 1994 by Stephen Porges.
Developmental psychobiology is an interdisciplinary field, encompassing developmental psychology, biological psychology, neuroscience and many other areas of biology. The field covers all phases of ontogeny, with particular emphasis on prenatal, perinatal and early childhood development. Conducting research into basic aspects of development, for example, the development of infant attachment, sleep, eating, thermoregulation, learning, attention and acquisition of language occupies most developmental psychobiologists. At the same time, they are actively engaged in research on applied problems such as sudden infant death syndrome, the development and care of the preterm infant, autism, and the effects of various prenatal insults on the development of brain and behavior.
Stephen W. Porges is an American psychologist and neuroscientist. He is the Professor of Psychiatry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Porges is also currently Director of the Kinsey Institute Traumatic Stress Research Consortium at Indiana University Bloomington, which studies trauma. He was previously a professor at the University of Illinois, Chicago, where he was director of the Brain-Body Center at the College of Medicine, and at the University of Maryland.
Some of the research that is conducted in the field of psychology is more "fundamental" than the research conducted in the applied psychological disciplines, and does not necessarily have a direct application. The subdisciplines within psychology that can be thought to reflect a basic-science orientation include biological psychology, cognitive psychology, neuropsychology, and so on. Research in these subdisciplines is characterized by methodological rigor. The concern of psychology as a basic science is in understanding the laws and processes that underlie behavior, cognition, and emotion. Psychology as a basic science provides a foundation for applied psychology. Applied psychology, by contrast, involves the application of psychological principles and theories yielded up by the basic psychological sciences; these applications are aimed at overcoming problems or promoting well-being in areas such as mental and physical health and education.
Cultural neuroscience is a field of research that focuses on the interrelation between a human's cultural environment and neurobiological systems. The field particularly incorporates ideas and perspectives from related domains like anthropology, psychology, and cognitive neuroscience to study sociocultural influences on human behaviors. Such impacts on behavior are often measured using various neuroimaging methods, through which cross-cultural variability in neural activity can be examined.
Daniel S. Schechter is an American and Swiss psychiatrist known for his clinical work and research on intergenerational transmission or "communication" of violent trauma and related psychopathology involving parents and very young children. His published work in this area following the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York of September 11, 2001 led to a co-edited book entitled "September 11: Trauma and Human Bonds" (2003) and additional original articles with clinical psychologist Susan Coates that were translated into multiple languages and remain among the first accounts of 9/11 related loss and trauma described by mental health professionals who also experienced the attacks and their aftermath Schechter observed that separation anxiety among infants and young children who had either lost or feared loss of their caregivers triggered posttraumatic stress symptoms in the surviving caregivers. These observations validated his prior work on the adverse impact of family violence on the early parent-child relationship, formative social-emotional development and related attachment disturbances involving mutual dysregulation of emotion and arousal. This body of work on trauma and attachment has been cited by prominent authors in the attachment theory, psychological trauma, developmental psychobiology and neuroscience literatures
Psychology encompasses a vast domain, and includes many different approaches to the study of mental processes and behavior. Below are the major areas of inquiry that taken together constitute psychology. A comprehensive list of the sub-fields and areas within psychology can be found at the list of psychology topics and list of psychology disciplines.
Myron Arms Hofer is an American psychiatrist and research scientist, currently Sackler Institute Professor Emeritus in the Department of Psychiatry at Columbia University College of Physicians & Surgeons. He is known for his research on basic developmental processes at work within the mother-infant relationship. Using animal models, he found unexpected neurobiological and behavioral regulatory processes within the observable interactions of the infant rat and its mother. Through an experimental analysis of these sensorimotor, thermal and nutrient-based processes, he has contributed to our understanding of the impact of early maternal separation, the origins of the attachment system, and the shaping of later development by variations in how mothers and infants interact.
Clinical neuroscience is a branch of neuroscience that focuses on the scientific study of fundamental mechanisms that underlie diseases and disorders of the brain and central nervous system. It seeks to develop new ways of conceptualizing and diagnosing such disorders and ultimately of developing novel treatments.
Robert Lemelson is an American cultural anthropologist, ethnographic filmmaker and philanthropist. Lemelson received his M.A. from the University of Chicago and Ph.D. from the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles. Lemelson's area of specialty is transcultural psychiatry; Southeast Asian Studies, particularly Indonesia; and psychological and medical anthropology. He currently is a research anthropologist in the Semel Institute of Neuroscience UCLA, and an adjunct professor of Anthropology at UCLA. His scholarly work has appeared in numerous journals and books. Lemelson founded Elemental Productions in 2008, a documentary production company, and has directed and produced numerous ethnographic films. His blog Psychocultural Cinema contains numerous blog-posts and edited film works.
Jee Hyun Kim is an Australian behavioral neuroscientist whose work focuses on emotional learning and memory during childhood and adolescence. She is an associate professor, principal research fellow, and head of the Molecular Psychiatry Laboratory at the Deakin University School of Medicine, Australia
Frances A. Champagne is a Canadian psychologist and University Professor of Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin known for her research in the fields of molecular neuroscience, maternal behavior, and epigenetics. Research in the Champagne lab explores the developmental plasticity that occurs in response to environmental experiences. She is known for her work on the epigenetic transmission of maternal behavior. Frances Champagne's research has revealed how natural variations in maternal behavior can shape the behavioral development of offspring through epigenetic changes in gene expression in a brain region specific manner. She won the NIH Director's New Innovator Award in 2007 and the Frank A. Beach Young Investigator Award in Behavioral Neuroendocrinology in 2009. She has been described as the "bee's knees of neuroscience". She serves on the Committee on Fostering Healthy Mental, Emotional, and Behavioral Development Among Children and Youth in the United States.
