Evaluation of cultural differences in the cognitive performance between Iranians and Europeans is the title of a project performed by researchers of University of Tehran.

According to the public relations and information center of the Vice-Presidency for science and technology affairs, Reza Rostami, manager of the research project of “evaluation of cultural differences in the cognitive performance between Iranians and Europeans: a study on cultural neuroscience”, which is supported by the cognitive sciences and technologies development headquarter. Regarding this project and its importance, he stated: the brain wave databank is in America, containing information on EEG of people, which are normally collected. These data are used to compare brain waves of individuals in order to recognize the problem of people based on their normal wave data. In addition, this tool is used in our country.

He continued: our concern is to determine whether the brain waves of Iranians are similar to Europeans and Americans or not, so that we could be able to use their databank. A question is raised on the possibility of differences in brain wave condition of individuals due to cultural differences. Therefore, we have aimed to recognize the differences and establish a databank specifically for our own people.

This faculty member of University of Tehran also affirmed: this project is at the final stages and results of the collected data have shown that there are some differences in some brain waves of Iranians and Europeans. For instance, in the Gama wave, which is related to the normal brain functions, significant differences have been observed between Iranians and Swiss people. As such, there are some general differences caused by cultural differences, race and type of education, which affect the emergence of genes and brain function.

In another part of his speech, Rostami pointed out the issue of neuroscience with a cultural approach, asserting: currently, neuroscience has been considered by various scientific orientations, in a way that 20% of science production in advanced countries is in this area. One of the important challenges of this field is whether the world is a global village or cultural and geographical differences can affect brain performance. Therefore, cultural issues must be considered in neuroscience, which also regards ideological discussions and psychology, to make the science more applicable for the country.