CULTURE, BRAIN, MIND & MEDICINE
(January 26 - April 20, 1999)

PROGRAM

The seminar will provide faculty members of the Claremont Colleges the most up-to-date exposure to the new developments of the interdisciplinary inquiry in culture, brain, mind, and medicine. In particular, the seminar offers subject matter that could be of interest to a wide range of academicians, from art, literature, philosophy, and government to biology, psychology, anthropology, and neuroscience. Leading researchers, that have skillfully undertaken an interdisciplinary approach in studying brain, mind, body, and culture interactions, and their clinical implications, will be invited as speakers.

The Faculty Seminar is intended to promote interdisciplinary communication, as well as, an open and active discussion between anthropologists, psychologists, linguists, philosophers of science, historians, and even neuroscientists of the Claremont Colleges Consortium. Hopefully, the seminar will promote a lasting and fruitful dialogue between interested faculty members on brain, mind and body issues across disciplinary boundaries.

At the end of the Faculty Seminar, faculty members would gain some integrative understanding of certain human behaviors like religious experiences, alternative states of consciousness, traditional healing processes, etc. It would also provide some insights on the methodological intricacies of this kind of interdisciplinary research, and a sense of the richness of this approach.

Shamans and Endorphins
Tuesday, January 26, 1999.

Raymond H. Prince, MD, MSc. Retired professor of Psychiatry, McGill University; former Director of the Division of Social & Transcultural Psychiatry; and former Editor, "Transcultural Psychiatry Research Review"

3:00 PM - 4:00 Presentation *
4:00 - 5:00 PM Discussion Session *

Location: Security Pacific Foundation Seminar Room 101, W.M. Keck Science Center.

5:00-5:30 PM Break
5:30 PM Reception
6:00 PM Dinner
6:45 - 7:30 PM Public Lecture (including 10 min of questions period)

Location: Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum

Ethnicity and Variability of Responses to Psychotropic Drugs
Tuesday  March 2, 1999.

Keh-Ming Lin, MD, MPH. Professor of Psychiatry; Director, NIMH Research Center on The Psychobiology of Ethnicity, UCLA.

3:00 PM - 4:00 Presentation *
4:00 - 5:00 PM Discussion Session *

Location: Security Pacific Foundation Seminar Room 101, W.M. Keck Science Center.

5:00-5:30 PM Break
5:30 PM Reception
6:00 PM Dinner
6:45 - 7:30 PM Public Lecture (including 10 min of questions period)

Location: Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum

Cultural Models, Connectionism, and
Psychodynamics: How Culture gets Inside the Mind.
Tuesday, March 30, 1999

Drew Westen, PhD. Professor of Psychology, Harvard University.

4:00 PM - 5:00 Presentation *
5:00 - 6 PM Discussion Session *

Location: Security Pacific Foundation Seminar Room 101, W.M. Keck Science Center.

6:15 PM Break
6:15 - 7:00 PM Dinner *
7:00 - 7:45 PM Public Lecture "How Culture gets Inside the Mind" (including 10 min of questions period)

Location: Galileo Hall, Harvey Mudd College.

Neural Correlates of Japanese Reading:
Brain Imaging Studies.
Tuesday, April 20, 1999.

Sachiko Koyama, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Integrative Physiology, National Institute for Physiological Sciences, Okazaki, Aichi, Japan.

5:00 - 6 PM Presentation

Location: Performance Space, Edythe and Eli Broad Center, Pizer College.

6:00 - 6:30 PM Break
6:30 - 8:00 PM Dinner & Discussion*

Location: Founders Room, McConnell Center, Pitzer College.

* Limited to registered faculty

Dr. Raymond H. Prince, Professor of Psychiatry, McGill University.

LECTURES

Shamans & Endorphins

The first guest speaker was Dr. Raymond Prince, one of the founding figures of transcultural psychiatry and retired Professor of Psychiatry at McGill University. The connection between shamans and endorphins is truly a great and fascinating interdisciplinary exercise in the study of the human mind. Dr. Prince and coworkers suspected the presence of beta-endorphins among the trancing devotees at the Thaipusam Festival in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Although the researchers were unable to get conclusive results, the study remains an exceptional multidisciplinary project for understanding the trance states and spontaneous analgesia related to certain religious ceremonies in a non-Western setting.

Readings. Raymond H. Prince.  Shamans and Endorphins: Hypotheses for a Synthesis.  Ethos 1982;10:409-423.

Over the past decade, medical research has consistently shown that members of some ethnocultural groups were receiving inappropriate doses of psychotropic medicines. Further studies suggest striking interindividual and cross-ethnic differences in the response to psychotropic medicines. Our second guest speaker Dr. Keh-Ming Lin is conducting research, at the heart of the young field of pharmacogenetics. Many pharmacological processes seem to explain the clinical observation of interethnic differences in the doses required, side effects, toxic reactions, etc. Dr. Lin is Professor of Psychiatry at UCLA and founder/director of the National Institute of Mental Health Research Center on the Psychobiology of Ethnicity.

Our third speaker was Dr. Drew Westen, Professor of Psychology at Harvard Medical School. He was an engaging speaker who rapidly captured the interest of many students. He was particularly skillful using psychodynamic theory for explaining that much of the mental life, including thoughts, feelings and motives is unconscious. Another feature outlined by Westen was the implicit (unconscious) processes and the explicit (conscious) processes. The implicit processes seem to play a fundamental role in human behavior. His example of a person who is consciously sensitive and respectful of other ethnic groups but with implicit racist attitudes was striking.

Dr. Sachiko Koyama, Assistant Professor in the Department of Integrative Physiology, National Institute for Physiological Sciences, Japan, is a remarkable young researcher interested in the study of brain mechanisms implicated in the processing of the Japanese language. The Japanese include the "kana" (syllabic) and "kanji" (ideographic) systems. This unusual two-code arrangement is quite unique in the world, and a new cultural phenomenon, since the Japanese language adopted the "kanji" system approximately in the 5th century. Dr. Koyama is trying to visualize and determine where the "kana" and "kanji" systems are processed in the working brains of Japanese volunteers. Using powerful functional brain imaging techniques she suggested that the region just above and posterior to the ears (right and left posterior inferior temporal areas) are activated while reading in Japanese.

FACTS

Here you will find some facts related to the Luce Faculty Seminar on Culture, Brain, Mind, and Medicine (spring 1999).

Number of registered faculty (expected):15

Number of registered faculty: 25

Colleges represented: Pitzer, CMC, Scripps, CGU, Pomona, HMC, Joint Science, Claremont School of Theology, and out of campus.

Participation:  Average number of participants 125; maximum 200 and minimum 65.