You are asked to select one of five pens; four are red, one is green. Which one do you choose?

The answer may depend on where in the world you're from, according to brain researchers. Scientists administered cognitive tests to East Asians and Americans while monitoring their brain activity. Their findings: Western culture conditions people to think of themselves as highly independent entities. In contrast, East Asian cultures stress interdependence.

That leads Westerners to choose the green pen (the one that stands out from the others) more often than not, and Easterners to choose the red one. The two groups follow a similar pattern when looking at photographs:

When looking at scenes, Westerners tend to focus on central objects more than on their surroundings. When Easterners take in a scene, they tend to focus more on the context as well as the object: the whole block, say, rather than the BMW parked in the foreground.

To use a camera analogy, "the Americans are more zoom and the East Asians are more panoramic," said Dr. Denise Park of the Center for Brain Health at the University of Texas in Dallas. "The Easterner probably sees more, and the Westerner probably sees less, but in more detail."

The researchers attributed these differences to cultural learning. "Culture can affect not just language and custom, but how people experience the world at stunningly basic levels - what they see when they look at a city street, for example, or even how they perceive a simple line in a square."