Behavioral and neurological studies have revealed that emotions influence moral cognition. Although moral stimuli are emotionally charged, the time course of interactions between emotions and moral judgments remains unknown. In the present study, we investigated the temporal dynamics of the interaction between emotional processes and moral cognition. The results revealed that when making moral judgments, the time course of the event-related potential (ERP) waveform was significantly different between high emotional arousal and low emotional arousal contexts. Different stages of processing were distinguished, showing distinctive interactions between emotional processes and moral reasoning. The precise time course of moral intuition and moral reasoning sheds new light on theoretical models of moral psychology. Specifically, the N1 component (interpreted as representing moral intuition) did not appear to be influenced by emotional arousal. However, the N2 component and late positive potential were strongly affected by emotional arousal; the slow wave was influenced by both emotional arousal and morality, suggesting distinct moral processing at different emotional arousal levels.

BackgroundTime discounting refers to the fact that the subjective value of a reward decreases as the delay until its occurrence increases. The present study investigated how time discounting has been affected in survivors of the magnitude-8.0 Wenchuan earthquake that occurred in China in 2008.MethodologyNineteen earthquake survivors and 22 controls, all school teachers, participated in the study. Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) for time discounting tasks involving gains and losses were acquired in both the victims and controls.FindingsThe behavioral data replicated our previous findings that delayed gains were discounted more steeply after a disaster. ERP results revealed that the P200 and P300 amplitudes were increased in earthquake survivors. There was a significant group (earthquake vs. non- earthquake) × task (gain vs. loss) interaction for the N300 amplitude, with a marginally significantly reduced N300 for gain tasks in the experimental group, which may suggest a deficiency in inhibitory control for gains among victims.ConclusionsThe results suggest that post-disaster decisions might involve more emotional (System 1) and less rational thinking (System 2) in terms of a dual-process model of decision making. The implications for post-disaster intervention and management are also discussed.

This study examined the influence of emotion on time perception and its neural correlates by measuring event-related potentials. Participants were asked to discriminate a previously memorized 700 ms 'standard' duration from 490, 700 and 910 ms, which were presented by emotional and neutral faces. The results showed decreased contingent negative variation potentials, which index timing, for emotional conditions versus the neutral condition. In addition, under the emotional conditions, the P160 and P240 amplitudes were enhanced and the N230 amplitude was decreased. These findings suggest that temporal processing can be modulated by emotion, even within 200 ms of the stimulus onset, and that the attentional bias for emotion attenuates the cognitive resources for time perception.

Black and white have been shown to be representations of moral concepts. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether colours other than black and white have similar effects on words related to morality and to determine the time course of these effects. We presented moral and immoral words in three colours (red, green and blue) in a Moral Stroop task and used the event-related potential (ERP) technique to identify the temporal dynamics of the impact of colours on moral judgement. The behavioural results showed that it took longer for people to judge immoral words than moral words when the words were coloured green than when they were red or blue. The ERP results revealed the time course of these effects. Three stages were identified in the significant effects of P200, N300 and LPC. These findings suggest a metaphorical association between the colour green and moral information.

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The ability to integrate the moral intention information with the outcome of an action plays a crucial role in mature moral judgment. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies implicated that both prefrontal and temporo-parietal cortices are involved in moral intention and outcome processing. Here, we used the event-related potentials (ERPs) technique to investigate the temporal dynamics of the processing of the integration between intention and outcome information in harmful and helpful moral judgment. In two experiments, participants were asked to make moral judgments for agents who produced either negative/neutral outcomes with harmful/neutral intentions (harmful judgment) or positive/neutral outcomes with helpful/neutral intentions (helpful judgment). Significant ERP differences between attempted and successful actions over prefrontal and bilateral temporo-parietal regions were found in both harmful and helpful moral judgment, which suggest a possible time course of the integration processing in the brain, starting from the right temporo-parietal area (N180) to the left temporo-parietal area (N250), then the prefrontal area (FSW) and the right temporo-parietal area (TP450 and TPSW) again. These results highlighted the fast moral intuition reaction and the late integration processing over the right temporo-parietal area.

Objectives:Noninvasive brain stimulation methods, including high-definition transcranial direct current stimulation (HD-tDCS) and theta burst stimulation (TBS) have emerged as novel tools to modulate and explore brain function. However, the relative efficacy of these newer stimulation approaches for modulating cognitive functioning remains unclear. This study investigated the cognitive effects of HD-tDCS, intermittent TBS (iTBS) and prolonged continuous TBS (ProcTBS) and explored the potential of these approaches for modulating hypothesized functions of the left posterior parietal cortex (PPC).Methods:Twenty-two healthy volunteers attended four experimental sessions in a cross-over experimental design. In each session, participants either received HD-tDCS, iTBS, ProcTBS or sham, and completed cognitive tasks, including a divided attention task, a working memory maintenance task and an attention task (emotional Stroop test).Results:The results showed that compared to sham, HD-tDCS, iTBS and ProcTBS caused significantly faster response times on the emotional Stroop task. The effect size (Cohen’sd) wasd= .32 for iTBS (p< .001), .21 for ProcTBS (p= .01) and .15 for HD-tDCS (p= .044). However, for the performance on the divided attention and working memory maintenance tasks, no significant effect of stimulation was found.Conclusions:The results suggest that repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation techniques, including TBS, may have greater efficacy for modulating cognition compared with HD-tDCS, and extend existing knowledge about specific functions of the left PPC.

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