Frontopolar and anterior temporal cortex activation in a moral judgment task: preliminary functional MRI results in normal subjects

Abstract

-Objective: To study the brain areas which are activated when normal subjects make moral judgments. Method: Ten normal adults underwent BOLD functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during the auditory presentation of sentences that they were instructed to silently judge as either right or wrong. Half of the sentences had an explicit moral content (We break the law when necessary), the other half comprised factual statements devoid of moral connotation (Stones are made of water). After scanning, each subject rated the moral content, emotional valence, and judgment difficulty of each sentence on Likertlike scales. To exclude the effect of emotion on the activation results, individual responses were hemodynamically modeled for event-related fMRI analysis. The general linear model was used to evaluate the brain areas activated by moral judgment. Results: Regions activated during moral judgment included the frontopolar cortex (.PC), medial frontal gyrus, right anterior temporal cortex, lenticular nucleus, and cerebellum. Activation of .PC and medial frontal gyrus (BA 10/46 and 9) were largely independent of emotional experience and represented the largest areas of activation. Conclusions: These results concur with clinical observations assigning a critical role for the frontal poles and right anterior temporal cortex in the mediation of complex judgment processes according to moral constraints. The .PC may work in concert with the orbitofrontal and dorsolateral cortex in the regulation of human social conduct.KEY WORDS: frontal lobes, moral judgment, acquired sociopathy, psychopathy.Ativação do córtex frontopolar e temporal anterior em uma tarefa de julgamento moral: resultados preliminares de ressonância magnética funcional em indivíduos normais RESUMO -Objetivo: Estudar, com ressonância magnética funcional (RMf), as áreas cerebrais normalmente ativadas por julgamentos morais em tarefa de verificação de sentenças. Método: Dez adultos normais foram estudados com RMf-BOLD durante a apresentação auditiva de sentenças cujo conteúdo foram instruídos a julgar como certo ou errado. Metade das sentenças possuía um conteúdo moral explícito (Transgredimos a lei se necessário), enquanto a outra metade era constituída de afirmativas factuais desprovidas de conotação moral (Pedras são feitas de água). Depois do estudo funcional, cada indivíduo aferiu o conteúdo moral, a valência emocional, e a dificuldade de julgamento de cada sentença em escalas de Likert. Para excluir o efeito da emoção nos resultados da ativação, as respostas individuais foram hemodinamicamente modeladas para análise de RMf relacionada a eventos. O modelo linear geral foi empregado na avaliação das áreas cerebrais ativadas pelos julgamentos morais. Resultados: As regiões ativadas pelo julgamento moral compreenderam o córtex frontopolar, o giro frontal medial, o córtex temporal anterior direito, o núcleo lenticular, e o cerebelo. As ativações frontopolar e médio-frontal (áreas 10/46 e 9 de Brodmann) mostraram-se independentes da experiência emoci...

The Anterior Midline Field: Coercion or decision making?

“…In even simple pairwise choice tasks, where subjects are asked which of two items within a category they prefer (e.g., pink or yellow color), VMF patients elicit a reliably higher level of inconsistency than healthy controls (Fellows & Farah, 2007). Neuroimaging studies have corroborated these findings, showing ventromedial prefrontal activity for many types of decisions, including reward-based decisions (O'Doherty, Kringelbach, Rolls, Hornak, & Andrews, 2001;Kringelbach, 2005;Blair et al, 2007;Daw, O'Doherty, Dayan, Seymour, & Dolan, 2006), guessing (Elliott, Rees, & Dolan, 1999) and moral judgments (Heekeren, Wartenburger, Schmidt, Schwintowski, & Villringer, 2003;Moll, Eslinger, & Oliveira-Souza, 2001;Moll, de Oliveira-Souza, Bramati, & Grafman, 2002;. Specifically, the VMF has been hypothesized to represent the current relative value of stimuli, which is then used to guide decision making (Fellows & Farah, 2007;Kringelbach, 2005;Sugrue, Corrado, & Newsome, 2005).…”

A neuroscientific approach to normative judgment in law and justice

“…In addition to establishing a target system for intuitive normative judgment, many of the fMRI studies found that brain regions linked with emotional processing are also active during moral judgments (Greene et al 2001;Moll et al 2001Moll et al , 2002aHeekeren et al 2003; for review see Greene & Haidt 2002;Moll et al 2003). As in the lesion data, the orbitofrontal cortex was often implicated.…”

“…In the past 4 or 5 years, a flurry of fMRI studies has investigated the neural basis of normative judgment (Greene & Haidt 2002;Greene et al 2001;Moll et al 2001Moll et al , 2002aMoll et al ,b, 2003Heekeren et al 2003Heekeren et al , 2004. Although it is possible to raise methodological concerns about some of these studies, it is important to recall that they are pioneering efforts.…”

“…The experiments take quite variable approaches. For instance, some used complex dilemmatic scenarios (Greene et al 2001), others more simple ethical decision-making tasks (Moll et al 2001(Moll et al , 2002aHeekeren et al 2003Heekeren et al , 2004. Greene et al (2001) set its dilemmas in an imaginary first person, asking what the subject would do.…”

Aportes sobre el correlato neuroanatómico de la personalidad

“…Un sin número de investigaciones han involucrado a la corteza fronto-medial (MFC) en funciones como control y monitoreo de las acciones 12,13 , monitoreo de resultados relacionados con castigos y recompensas 14,15 , percepción subjetiva de estímulos 16,17 , y cognición social 18 . Existe evidencia creciente del rol de la MFC en el autocontrol 13 , siendo esencial en el control de la acción, de modo que sea consistente con las circunstancias y propias intenciones 12,13,19 .…”