title: Culture and biology interplay: An introduction.
abstract: Culture and biology have evolved together, influence each other, and concurrently shape behavior, affect, cognition, and development. This special section highlights 2 major domains of the interplay between culture and biology.
  
  
  
  The first domain is neurobiology of cultural experiences-how cultural, ethnic, and racial experiences influence limbic systems and neuroendocrine functioning-and the second domain is cultural neuroscience-the connections between cultural processes and brain functioning.
  
  
  
  We include 3 studies on neurobiology of cultural experiences that examine the associations between racial discrimination and heart rate variability (Hill et al., 2016), economic and sociocultural stressors and cortisol levels (Mendoza, Dmitrieva, Perreira, & Watamura, 2016), and unfair treatment and allostatic load (Ong, Williams, Nwizu, & Gruenewald, 2016). We also include 2 studies on cultural neuroscience that investigate cultural group differences and similarities in beliefs, practices, and neural basis of emotion regulation (Qu & Telzer, 2016), and reflected and direct self-appraisals (Pfeifer et al., 2016).
  
  
  
  We discuss pending challenges and future directions for this emerging field. (PsycINFO Database Record
authors.affiliation: T. Denny Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics, Arizona State University.
authors.forename: José M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Causadias
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
authors.forename: Eva H
authors.initials: EH
authors.lastname: Telzer
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota.
authors.forename: Richard M
authors.initials: RM
authors.lastname: Lee
mesh_terms: D003071:Cognition; D003466:Cultural Characteristics; D004644:Emotions; D005006:Ethnicity; D006339:Heart Rate; D006801:Humans; D009488:Neurosciences