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Selective changes in moral judgment by noninvasive brain stimulation of the medial prefrontal cortex
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Multiple cortical networks intervene in moral judgment, among which the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and the medial prefrontal structures (medial PFC) emerged as two major territories, which have been traditionally attributed, respectively, to cognitive control and affective reactions. However, some recent theoretical and empirical accounts disputed this dualistic approach to moral evaluation. In the present study, to further assess the functional contribution of the medial PFC in moral judgment, we modulated its cortical excitability by means of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) and tracked the change in response to different types of moral dilemmas, including switch-like and footbridge-like moral dilemmas, with and without personal involvement. One hundred participants (50 males) completed a questionnaire to assess the baseline levels of deontology. Next, participants were randomly assigned to receive anodal, sham, or cathodal tDCS over the medial prefrontal structures and then were asked to address a series of dilemmas. The results showed that participants who received anodal stimulation over the medial PFC provided more utilitarian responses to switch-like (but not footbridge-like) dilemmas than those who received cathodal tDCS. We also found that neurostimulation modulated the influence that deontology has on moral choices. Specifically, in the anodal tDCS group, participants’ decisions were less likely to be influenced by their baseline levels of deontology compared with the sham or cathodal groups. Overall, our results seem to refute a functional role of the medial prefrontal structures purely restricted to affective reactions for moral dilemmas, providing new insights on the functional contribution of the medial PFC in moral judgment.
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... Transcranial Direct Current Simulation (tDCS) enabled researchers to examine the causal relationship between a functionality of interest and a brain region or circuitry by temporarily altering activity in the brain region or circuitry of interest (Young et al. 2010;Bestmann and Feredoes 2013;Riva et al. 2019). Previous neurostimulation studies have demonstrated that influencing regions and circuitries associated with moral functioning, e.g., the DMN, significantly changed moral cognition and behavior, e.g., evaluating self-traits, evaluating others' intent regarding moral transgression, moral decision making, and compliant behavior (Lou et al. 2010;Young et al. 2010;Ruff et al. 2013;Riva et al. 2019). ...
... Transcranial Direct Current Simulation (tDCS) enabled researchers to examine the causal relationship between a functionality of interest and a brain region or circuitry by temporarily altering activity in the brain region or circuitry of interest (Young et al. 2010;Bestmann and Feredoes 2013;Riva et al. 2019). Previous neurostimulation studies have demonstrated that influencing regions and circuitries associated with moral functioning, e.g., the DMN, significantly changed moral cognition and behavior, e.g., evaluating self-traits, evaluating others' intent regarding moral transgression, moral decision making, and compliant behavior (Lou et al. 2010;Young et al. 2010;Ruff et al. 2013;Riva et al. 2019). ...
... The large-scale neuroimaging evidence may suggest that moral functioning is inseparable from considerations and deliberations on others (the theory of mind) and oneself (self-related processes) (Colby and Damon 1993; Young et al. 2010). Furthermore, findings from brain stimulation studies that disrupted brain regions associated with self-related processes or mentalizing reported significant changes in moral decision-making and behavior, which also supports the point (Young et al. 2010;Ruff et al. 2013;Riva et al. 2019). Given these two functionalities were most strongly associated with moral functioning consistently across neuroimaging and experimental research, we may assume that these are central and even fundamental in moral functioning in general. ...
In this paper, findings from research in neuroscience of morality will be reviewed to consider the purposes of moral education. Particularly, I will focus on two main themes in neuroscience, novel neuroimaging and experimental investigations, and Bayesian learning mechanism. First, I will examine how neuroimaging and experimental studies contributed to our understanding of psychological mechanisms associated with moral functioning while addressing methodological concerns. Second, Bayesian learning mechanism will be introduced to acquire insights about how moral learning occurs in human brains. Based on the reviewed neuroscientific research on morality, I will examine how evidence can support the model of moral education proposed by virtue ethics, Neo-Aristotelian moral philosophy in particular. Particularly, two main aims of virtue ethics-based moral education, the habituation of virtues and the cultivation of phronesis, will be discussed as the important purposes of moral education based on neuroscientific evidence.
... Transcranial Direct Current Simulation (tDCS) enabled researchers to examine the causal relationship between a functionality of interest and a brain region or circuitry by temporarily altering activity in the brain region or circuitry of interest (Young et al. 2010;Bestmann and Feredoes 2013;Riva et al. 2019). Previous neurostimulation studies have demonstrated that influencing regions and circuitries associated with moral functioning, e.g., the DMN, significantly changed moral cognition and behavior, e.g., evaluating self-traits, evaluating others' intent regarding moral transgression, moral decision making, and compliant behavior (Lou et al. 2010;Young et al. 2010;Ruff et al. 2013;Riva et al. 2019). ...
... Transcranial Direct Current Simulation (tDCS) enabled researchers to examine the causal relationship between a functionality of interest and a brain region or circuitry by temporarily altering activity in the brain region or circuitry of interest (Young et al. 2010;Bestmann and Feredoes 2013;Riva et al. 2019). Previous neurostimulation studies have demonstrated that influencing regions and circuitries associated with moral functioning, e.g., the DMN, significantly changed moral cognition and behavior, e.g., evaluating self-traits, evaluating others' intent regarding moral transgression, moral decision making, and compliant behavior (Lou et al. 2010;Young et al. 2010;Ruff et al. 2013;Riva et al. 2019). ...
... The large-scale neuroimaging evidence may suggest that moral functioning is inseparable from considerations and deliberations on others (the theory of mind) and oneself (self-related processes) (Colby and Damon 1993;Young et al. 2010). Furthermore, findings from brain stimulation studies that disrupted brain regions associated with self-related processes or mentalizing reported significant changes in moral decision-making and behavior, which also supports the point (Young et al. 2010;Ruff et al. 2013;Riva et al. 2019). Given these two functionalities were most strongly associated with moral functioning consistently across neuroimaging and experimental research, we may assume that these are central and even fundamental in moral functioning in general. ...
In this paper, findings from research in neuroscience of morality will be overviewed to consider the purposes of moral education. Particularly, I will focus on two main themes in neuroscience, novel neuroimaging and experimental investigations, and Bayesian learning mechanism. First, I will examine how neuroimaging and experimental studies contributed to our understanding of psychological mechanisms associated with moral functioning while addressing methodological concerns. Second, Bayesian learning mechanism will be introduced to acquire insights about how moral learning occurs in human brains. Based on the overviewed neuroscientific research on morality, I will examine how evidence can support the model of moral education proposed by virtue ethics, Neo-Aristotelian moral philosophy in particular. Particularly, two main aims of virtue ethics-based moral education, habituation of virtues and cultivation of phronesis, will be discussed as the important purposes of moral education based on neuroscientific evidence.
... Meanwhile, men are more inclined to ignore the needs of others when making decisions when they are in a moral dilemma but give more consideration to principles, such as justice and equality (Friedman et al, 1987). In addition, neuroimaging studies support that there are gender differences in moral judgment (Riva et al, 2019). Some studies reported that women tend to exhibit stronger deontological tendencies than men (Friesdorf et al, 2015;Gilligan, 1982;Jaffee & Hyde, 2000). ...
... Four additional points should be noted for future research. First, building on studies with native-language tasks (Crockett et al., 2017;Riva et al., 2019;Van Bavel et al., 2015), the field could incorporate neuroscientific insights, including research on the neural regions and electrophysiological mechanisms underpinning between-language differences during moral decision making. This would be crucial, for instance, to find dissociations between moral decision processes and our framework's L2p-related modulators. ...
Socio-cognitive research on bilinguals points to a moral foreign-language effect (MFLE), with more utilitarian choices (e.g., sacrificing someone to save more people) for moral dilemmas presented in the second language (L2) relative to the first language. Yet, inconsistent results highlight the influence of subject-level variables, including a critical underexplored factor: L2 proficiency (L2p). Here we provide a systematic review of 57 bilingualism studies on moral dilemmas, showing that L2p rarely modulates responses to impersonal dilemmas, but it does impact personal dilemmas (with MFLEs proving consistent at intermediate L2p levels but unsystematic at high L2p levels). We propose an empirico-theoretical framework to conceptualize such patterns, highlighting the impact of L2p on four affective mediating factors: mental imagery, inhibitory control, prosocial behavior and numerical processing. Finally, we outline core challenges for the field. These insights open new avenues at the crossing of bilingualism and social cognition research.
... In addition to the correlational evidence, several neuroscientific experiments have also demonstrated experimental results that can support the association between the DMN-related brain regions and moral functioning with causal evidence. For instance, when activity in the regions, e.g., the MPFC and PCC, were disrupted by non-invasive neurostimulation methods, such as the transcranial magnetic stimulation and transcranial direct current stimulation, participants' socio-cognitive functioning related to morality and character, e.g., self-evaluation, evaluation of intent regarding moral violation, moral decision making, and compliance were also significantly altered (Lou et al., 2010;Young et al., 2010;Ruff et al., 2013;Riva et al., 2019). ...
Universal assumptions of character development largely omit cultural and contextual factors and processes as critical influencers of character development, thereby ignoring that the ascribed and prescribed social positions of some children impact opportunities to develop “good character.” This chapter critically questions the premises of character development and ways of learning to develop “good character” and offers guidance on how to reimagine frameworks that encompass culturally relevant factors and processes that align with the developmental context of minoritized youth. Via a synthesis of theories and extant studies of character development, the authors showcase how macrolevel, historical, and structural inequalities greatly affect the lives of an increasingly diverse US population and have implications for what it means to be “moral,” “good,” and “ethical.” They conclude with a challenge to (1) move beyond Westernized perceptions of “good character” and (2) adapt and reconfigure existing character development frameworks that are inclusive of all youth realities.
... The authors did not evaluate differences in sex that could complement (Fumagalli et al., 2010) findings. Finally, recent work by Riva et al. (2018) investigated VMPFC modulation during a moral dilemma task, with the active electrode (anodal or cathodal) over VMPFC and the reference electrode over the occipital area. The findings revealed similar effects to Fumagalli et al. (2010) and Yuan et al. (2017), where participants receiving anodal tDCS over VMPFC had a higher frequency of utility judgments. ...
Machine learning (ML) is a subarea of artificial intelligence which uses the induction approach to learn based on previous experiences and make conclusions about new inputs (Mitchell, Machine learning. McGraw Hill, 1997). In the last decades, the use of ML approaches to analyze neuroimaging data has attracted widening attention (Pereira et al., Neuroimage 45(1):S199–S209, 2009; Lemm et al., Neuroimage 56(2):387–399, 2011). Particularly interesting recent applications to affective and social neuroscience include affective state decoding, exploring potential biomarkers of neurological and psychiatric disorders, predicting treatment response, and developing real-time neurofeedback and brain-computer interface protocols. In this chapter, we review the bases of the most common neuroimaging techniques, the basic concepts of ML, and how it can be applied to neuroimaging data. We also describe some recent examples of applications of ML-based analysis of neuroimaging data to social and affective neuroscience issues. Finally, we discuss the main ethical aspects and future perspectives for these emerging approaches.
... The authors did not evaluate differences in sex that could complement (Fumagalli et al., 2010) findings. Finally, recent work by Riva et al. (2018) investigated VMPFC modulation during a moral dilemma task, with the active electrode (anodal or cathodal) over VMPFC and the reference electrode over the occipital area. The findings revealed similar effects to Fumagalli et al. (2010) and Yuan et al. (2017), where participants receiving anodal tDCS over VMPFC had a higher frequency of utility judgments. ...
Several studies have demonstrated sex differences in empathy and social abilities. This chapter reviews studies on sex differences in the brain, with particular reference to how women and men process faces and facial expressions, social interactions, pain of others, infant faces, faces in things ( pareidolia ), living vs. non-living information, purposeful actions, biological motion, erotic vs. emotional information. Sex differences in oxytocin-based attachment response and emotional memory are also discussed. Overall, the female and male brains show some neuro-functional differences in several aspects of social cognition, with particular regard to emotional coding, face processing and response to baby schema that might be interpreted in the light of evolutionary psychobiology.
... The authors did not evaluate differences in sex that could complement (Fumagalli et al., 2010) findings. Finally, recent work by Riva et al. (2018) investigated VMPFC modulation during a moral dilemma task, with the active electrode (anodal or cathodal) over VMPFC and the reference electrode over the occipital area. The findings revealed similar effects to Fumagalli et al. (2010) and Yuan et al. (2017), where participants receiving anodal tDCS over VMPFC had a higher frequency of utility judgments. ...
Embodiment has been discussed in the context of social, affective, and cognitive psychology, and also in the investigations of neuroscience in order to understand the relationship between biological mechanisms, body and cognitive, and social and affective processes. New theoretical models have been presented by researchers considering not only the sensory–motor interaction and the environment but also biological mechanisms regulating homeostasis and neural processes (Tsakiris M, Q J Exp Psychol 70(4):597–609, 2017). Historically, the body and the mind were comprehended as separate entities. The body was considered to function as a machine, responsible for providing sensory information to the mind and executing its commands. The mind, however, would process information in an isolated way, similar to a computer (Pecher D, Zwaan RA, Grounding cognition: the role of perception and action in memory, language, and thinking. Cambridge University Press, 2005). This mind and body perspective (Marmeleira J, Duarte Santos G, Percept Motor Skills 126, 2019; Marshall PJ, Child Dev Perspect 10(4):245–250, 2016), for many years, was the basis for studies in social and cognitive areas, in neuroscience, and clinical psychology.
Prosocial and moral behaviors have overlapping neural systems and can both be affected in a number of psychiatric disorders, although whether they involve similar neurochemical systems is unclear. In the current registered randomized placebo-controlled trial on 180 adult male and female subjects, we investigated the effects of intranasal administration of oxytocin and vasopressin, which play key roles in influencing social behavior, on moral emotion ratings for situations involving harming others and on judgments of moral dilemmas where others are harmed for a greater good. Oxytocin, but not vasopressin, enhanced feelings of guilt and shame for intentional but not accidental harm and reduced endorsement of intentionally harming others to achieve a greater good. Neither peptide influenced arousal ratings for the scenarios. Effects of oxytocin on guilt and shame were strongest in individuals scoring lower on the personal distress subscale of trait empathy. Overall, findings demonstrate for the first time that oxytocin, but not vasopressin, promotes enhanced feelings of guilt and shame and unwillingness to harm others irrespective of the consequences. This may reflect associations between oxytocin and empathy and vasopressin with aggression and suggests that oxytocin may have greater therapeutic potential for disorders with atypical social and moral behavior.
Increasing evidence shows that anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) enhances cognitive performance in healthy and clinical population. Such facilitation is supposed to be linked to plastic changes at relevant cortical sites. However, direct electrophysiological evidence for this causal relationship is still missing. Here, we show that cognitive enhancement occurring in healthy human subjects during anodal tDCS is affected by ongoing brain activity, increasing cortical excitability of task-related brain networks only, as directly measured by Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation combined with electroencephalography (TMS-EEG). Specifically, TMS-EEG recordings were performed before and after anodal tDCS coupled with a verbal fluency task. To control for effects of tDCS protocol and TMS target location, 3 conditions were assessed: anodal/sham tDCS with TMS over left premotor cortex, anodal tDCS with TMS over left posterior parietal cortex. Modulation of cortical excitability occurred only at left Brodmann's areas 6, 44, and 45, a key network for language production, after anodal tDCS and TMS over the premotor cortex, and was positively correlated to the degree of cognitive enhancement. Our results suggest that anodal tDCS specifically affects task-related functional networks active while delivering stimulation, and this boost of specific cortical circuits is correlated to the observed cognitive enhancement.
Research has shown that exposure to violent media increases aggression. However, the neural underpinnings of violent-media-related aggression are poorly understood. Additionally, few experiments have tested hypotheses concerning how to reduce violent-media-related aggression. In this experiment, we focused on a brain area involved in the regulation of aggressive impulses—the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (rVLPFC). We tested the hypothesis that brain polarization through anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) over rVLPFC reduces aggression related to violent video games. Participants (N = 79) were randomly assigned to play a violent or a nonviolent video game while receiving anodal or sham stimulation. Afterward, participants aggressed against an ostensible partner using the Taylor aggression paradigm (Taylor Journal of Personality, 35, 297–310, 1967), which measures both unprovoked and provoked aggression. Among those who received sham stimulation, unprovoked aggression was significantly higher for violent-game players than for nonviolent-game players. Among those who received anodal stimulation, unprovoked aggression did not differ for violent- and nonviolent-game players. Thus, anodal stimulation reduced unprovoked aggression in violent-game players. No significant effects were found for provoked aggression, suggesting tit-for-tat responding. This experiment sheds light on one possible neural underpinning of violent-media-related aggression—the rVLPFC, a brain area involved in regulating negative feelings and aggressive impulses.
Numerous brain lesion and functional neuroimaging studies have suggested that the dorsolateral and frontopolar prefrontal regions are involved in complex cognitive processes subserving thought and memory. However, previously proposed functional subdivisions of prefrontal function have concentrated predominantly on posterior prefrontal cortex, including the dorsolateral, ventral, and medial regions. Far less consideration has been given to characterizing the psychological processes mediated by the frontopolar cortex. Here we review published neuroimaging studies of reasoning and episodic memory, two domains in which the frontopolar cortex has been frequently activated. The results suggest that dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is involved when externally generated information is being evaluated, whereas the frontopolar cortex becomes recruited when internally generated information needs to be evaluated. A hierarchical model of prefrontal function is proposed in which dorsolateral and frontopolar regions are serially recruited as a reasoning or memory task requires evaluation of internally generated information.
Description Fit linear and generalized linear mixed-effects models. The models and their components are represented using S4 classes and methods. The core computational algorithms are implemented using the 'Eigen' C++ library for numerical linear algebra and 'RcppEigen' ``glue''.
A study that goes beyond the debate over functional specialization to describe the ways that emotion and cognition interact and are integrated in the brain.
The idea that a specific brain circuit constitutes the emotional brain (and its corollary, that cognition resides elsewhere) shaped thinking about emotion and the brain for many years. Recent behavioral, neuropsychological, neuroanatomy, and neuroimaging research, however, suggests that emotion interacts with cognition in the brain. In this book, Luiz Pessoa moves beyond the debate over functional specialization, describing the many ways that emotion and cognition interact and are integrated in the brain.
The amygdala is often viewed as the quintessential emotional region of the brain, but Pessoa reviews findings revealing that many of its functions contribute to attention and decision making, critical components of cognitive functions. He counters the idea of a subcortical pathway to the amygdala for affective visual stimuli with an alternate framework, the multiple waves model. Citing research on reward and motivation, Pessoa also proposes the dual competition model, which explains emotional and motivational processing in terms of their influence on competition processes at both perceptual and executive function levels. He considers the broader issue of structure-function mappings, and examines anatomical features of several regions often associated with emotional processing, highlighting their connectivity properties. As new theoretical frameworks of distributed processing evolve, Pessoa concludes, a truly dynamic network view of the brain will emerge, in which "emotion" and "cognition" may be used as labels in the context of certain behaviors, but will not map cleanly into compartmentalized pieces of the brain.
Much of the research in epidemiology and clinical science is based upon longitudinal designs which involve repeated measurements of a variable of interest in each of a series of individuals. Such designs can be very powerful, both statistically and scientifically, because they enable one to study changes within individual subjects over time or under varied conditions. However, this power arises because the repeated measurements tend to be correlated with one another, and this must be taken into proper account at the time of analysis or misleading conclusions may result. Recent advances in statistical theory and in software development mean that studies based upon such designs can now be analysed more easily, in a valid yet flexible manner, using a variety of approaches which include the use of generalized estimating equations, and mixed models which incorporate random effects. This paper provides a particularly simple illustration of the use of these two approaches, taking as a practical example the analysis of a study which examined the response of portable peak expiratory flow meters to changes in true peak expiratory flow in 12 children with asthma. The paper takes the reader through the relevant practicalities of model fitting, interpretation and criticism and demonstrates that, in a simple case such as this, analyses based upon these model-based approaches produce reassuringly similar inferences to standard analyses based upon more conventional methods. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
The general linear mixed model provides a useful approach for analysing a wide variety of data structures which practising statisticians often encounter. Two such data structures which can be problematic to analyse are unbalanced repeated measures data and longitudinal data. Owing to recent advances in methods and software, the mixed model analysis is now readily available to data analysts. The model is similar in many respects to ordinary multiple regression, but because it allows correlation between the observations, it requires additional work to specify models and to assess goodness-of-fit. The extra complexity involved is compensated for by the additional flexibility it provides in model fitting. The purpose of this tutorial is to provide readers with a sufficient introduction to the theory to understand the method and a more extensive discussion of model fitting and checking in order to provide guidelines for its use. We provide two detailed case studies, one a clinical trial with repeated measures and dropouts, and one an epidemiological survey with longitudinal follow-up. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Is the science of moral cognition usefully modeled on aspects of Universal Grammar? Are human beings born with an innate “moral grammar” that causes them to analyze human action in terms of its moral structure, with just as little awareness as they analyze human speech in terms of its grammatical structure? Questions like these have been at the forefront of moral psychology ever since John Mikhail revived them in his infl uential work on the linguistic analogy and its implications for jurisprudence and moral theory. In this seminal book, Mikhail offers a careful and sustained analysis of the moral grammar hypothesis, showing how some of John Rawls’ original ideas about the linguistic analogy, together with famous thought experiments like the trolley problem, can be used to improve our understanding of moral and legal judgment. The book will be of interest to philosophers, cognitive scientists, legal scholars, and other researchers in the interdisciplinary fi eld of moral psychology.