Neurosociology

In the 1990s “Decade of the Brain,” a call has been made for the development of social neuroscience to improve the performance of the neurosciences and bio-behavioral sciences. It is proposed that the measurement and description of brain function provides an opportunity for the social sciences to newly address the relationship between mind and society. Sperry's emergent mentalism is criticized for seeing mind as the top level of analysis; just as brain is infrastructure for mind, so mind is seen as infrastructure for the emergent and relatively autonomous sociocultural level. Neurosociology is grouped with other social-science based fields such as neuroanthropology and with philosophybased fields, which are referred to collectively as the ethnoneurologies. Versions of neurosociology are reviewed, along with findings from studies in neurosociology. Soviet neuropsychology, in spite of its constraints, generated an emergent mentalism, a neurosociology in which the mentality of the person is socially and historically produced. The concept of functional systems is elaborated. Neurometric methodology that is appropriate for social neuroscience research is discussed.