Human Morality

1. Human Morality Moll et al., (2005). The neural basis of moral cognition. Nature Reviews/Neuroscience, 6, 799-809 The neural basis of human moral cognition

2. Moral Cognitive Neuroscience

3. Moral Cognitive Neuroscience • Is an emerging field of research that focuses on the neural basis of uniquely human forms of social cognition and behavior • Researchers of this field aim to understand and explain the cognitive and neural mechanism that underlie moral behavior

4. Moral Cognitive Neuroscience • Defines Morality as the sets of customs and values that are embraced by a cultural group to guide social conduct • This view does not assume the existence of absolute moral values

5. Moral Cognitive Neuroscience • Researchers in this field have developed innovative paradigms for scientific exploration of unique forms of human social behavior • Recent studies are fostering new interpretations with regard to the neural bases of moral cognition • Functional imaging studies involved simple moral judgments, moral dilemmas, moral emotions using different tasks and stimulus presentation schemes

6. Cognitive Neuroscience • Functional imaging studies have revealed consistent involvement of: • aPFC • aTL • STS • Limbic regions

8. Some Experimental Procedures used for investigation of the neural basis of moral thinking • Moral Dilemma task • Iowa Gambling task • Theory of Mind Task • Studying Moral emotions with pictures

9. Moral Dilemma Task: Greene’s Hierarchcial Processing view • Based on functional imaging studies, Green and colleagues have focused their research on the role of cognitive control in moral judgment • Moral judgment- a type of evaluative judgment that is based on assessments of of the adequacy of one’s own and others’ behaviors according to socially shaped ideas of right and wrong • Greene's hierarchical processing view: • Assumes that cognitive control processes override emotional responses to produce UTILITARIAN responses to moral dilemmas

10. Conflict Processing in Moral Judgment • Greene's hierarchical processing view: • Assumes that cognitive control processes override emotional responses to produce UTILITARIAN responses to moral dilemmas • Utilitarianism- a moral philosophical theory according to which the best decisions are those that lead to the higher overall degree of happiness or the well being for the greatest number of people • Moral Dilemma: Should you kill an innocent person to save 5 people’s lives? • Example answer: you should. • Emotional areas favor ‘personal’ moral judgments • Example: Thinking that it is inappropriate to kill the innocent person • Theory believes that there are mutually competitive roles of cognition and emotion in moral judgment

11. Conflict Processing in Moral Judgment • Greene's hierarchical processing view: • Assumes that cognitive control processes override emotional responses to produce UTILITARIAN responses to moral dilemmas • Cognitive Control Processes are afforded by the lateral PFC and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) • Emotional responses are attributed to the medial PFC, posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) and superior temporal sulcus (STS) Cognitive Areas: Lateral PFC ACC Emotional Response Areas: Medial PFC PCC STS

12. Iowa Gambling Task • Used to investigate the Somatic Marker Hypothesis created by Damasio and colleagues by simulating real life decision making. • Argues that physiological affective reactions ordinarily guide and simplify decision making • Proposes that a somatic marker mechanism guides our behavior, particularly in decision making

13. Somatic Marker Hypothesis • Damasio and colleagues • Observed that patients with damage to their ventromedial PFC can detect the implications of a social situation, but cannot make the appropriate decisions in real life

14. Somatic Marker Hypothesis • Iowa Gambling Task • Used to simulate real life decision making • Previous Studies have revealed: • Normal individuals develop anticipatory galvanic skin responses, the Somatic Marker, when contemplating a risky choice • Patients with ventromedial PFC damage did not develop this same response • Suggests that they are not able to mark those implications with a signal that automatically distinguishes advantageous from destructive actions

15. Sociopathy as a failure of ‘Theory of Mind’ • Our ability to explain and predict other people’s behavior by attributing to them independent mental states • Lough et al assessment of JM: • 47 y/o Male • Decline in work performance • Deterioration of social behavior • Bilateral atrophy of the OFC and Anterior temporal lobes, including the amygdala • Normal IQ and performed fairly on standard executive tests • Performed poorly on: • TOM tasks

16. Sociopathy as a failure of ‘Theory of Mind’ • JM: • Bilateral atrophy of the OFC and Anterior temporal lobes, including the amygdala

17. Sociopathy as a failure of ‘Theory of Mind’ • Lough et al assessment of JM • Proposed that the dissociation b/t the impairment in TOM task and normal executive performance underlies the personality changes observed in some cases of frontotemporal dementia • Abnormal moral cognition qualities • Difficulties in attribution and experience of pride and embarrassment • Also observed in autism

18. Use of Pictures to explore moral emotions • Showed participants a series of pictures: • Pictures that depicted moral violation • aPFC • mOFC • STS • Brain Stem • Limbic structures • Scenes associated with basic emotions • Brain stem • Limbic structures

19. Moral Sensitivity Hypothesis • Consistent with the hypothesis – a network involving the aPFC, aOFC, STS and limbic regions represent social-emotional events linked to ‘moral sensitivity’ • An automatic tagging of ordinary social events with moral value

20. EFECs Event-Feature-Emotion complexes

21. EFECs • A new representation of neural architecture proposed by the authors which is based on their view that: • Neural mechanisms of moral cognition are not restricted to specific brain regions but the interaction of brain regions • Relies on 3 main components: • Structured event knowledge • Social perceptual and functional features • Central motive and emotional states

22. 1. Structured Event Knowledge • Humans integrate extensive contextual elements when assessing the behavior of others and when appreciating their own actions in a given situation. • Distinct PFC regions have been postulated to be involved in representing event sequence knowledge • Thus, Structured Event Knowledge corresponds to context-dependent representation of events and event sequences in the PFC • The importance of the PFC in structuring context-dependent social and non-social knowledge into SECs is described in terms of the SEC framework

23. Structured-Event Complex Framework • Supports the claim that executive functions performed by the PFC are based on stored event sequence knowledge • SEC representations • LTMs of event sequences that guide the perception and execution of goal oriented activities • Includes situational knowledge abstracted across events(going to a concert) and temporal organization of events (making reservations, dressing up, and so on)

24. Structured-Event Complex Framework • Predicts that different subdivisions of the PFC store different types of content or domain of event knowledge: • Ventromedial PFC- social and emotional SECs • Anterior PFC- novel or multi-tasking event sequences • More posterior PFC regions- over learned sequences

25. Structured Event Knowledge: Brain Areas • Medial and more posterior sectors of the PFC: • Store over-learned event sequences, such as routine tasks • DLPFC: • Where less predictable event sequences are represented

26. Structured Event Knowledge: Brain Areas • Anterior sectors of the PFC • Are more important for storing long-term goals and multi-stage event complexes, such as those involved in making plans and thinking about the future • Ventromedial sectors of the PFC • Involved in representing social and emotional event knowledge, which is essential for the formation of attitudes and social stereotypes

27. EFEC Framework Predictions • Lesions of the anterior PFC would lead to selective impairments in moral evaluations that rely on predicting the long-term outcomes of one’s own actions • They predict these patients would be guided more by short-term goals. • Because their knowledge of long-term plans and goals, or their binding with motivational relevance is impaired • Lesions of the DLPFC would lead to behavioral impairments in unfamiliar situations • Reliance on external guidance and stimuli becomes an issue • Well established social behaviors and attitudes is left intact

28. EFEC Framework Predictions • Lesions of the ventral sectors of the PFC • Leads to severe social behavioral changes • This is due to the disruption of social-emotional contextual knowledge • They predict that the earlier the development of lesions the more drastic the effects because it would impair the learning of moral values • Lesions of the Ventromedial PFC would impair adherence to well established social norms and attitudes

29. 2) Social Perceptual and Functional Features • STS • Anterior Temporal Lobe

30. Social Perceptual and Functional Features • When you skim a newspaper, gather with friends, or attend a football game your brain deals with a massive number of perceptual signs of social significance. • Our ability to manage this burden of information relies on complex patterns of featural and semantic knowledge

31. Social Perceptual and Functional Features : STS • Making implicit or explicit moral appraisals when engaged in the social world requires the ability to efficiently extract social perceptual and functional features from the environment • Social perceptual features are extracted from, facial expression, gaze, prosody, body posture and gestures • The posterior STS is a key region for storing these representations

32. Social Perceptual and Functional Features: STS • In support of this view, morphological abnormalities of the STS region have been implicated in the impaired social decoding observed in autism • Difficulty experienced by individuals with autism in attributing intentionality, which leads to reduced experience of pride and embarrassment

33. Social perceptual and functional features • The importance of the anterior temporal cortex for semantic feature knowledge is underscored by semantic impairments in semantic dementia. • Patients with anterior temporal lobe resection show impairments in naming human actions, which indicates that this region is involved in representing functional knowledge relevant to people. • The severe behavioral changes that are associated with isolated anterior temporal atrophy in semantic dementia and the finding of semantic impairments and abnormal activity in this brain region in psychopathic individuals support this view .

34. EFEC Framework Predictions • Damage to the posterior STS: • Predicted to disrupt the ability to recognize socially relevant perceptual features of the face, body posture and movements • Leads to inadequate social behavior that depend on the perception of these signals • Leaves intact previously established social rules and attitudes, and outcome knowledge • Thus, the time in life in which damage occurred is very important

35. EFEC Framework Predictions • Lesions of the anterior temporal lobe are expected to disrupt the knowledge of social concepts and values that more more context-independent • Honor or greed • Leaves intact context-dependent knowledge of sequences of social events • Ex. Going to a super market • Thus, they predict that loss of this knowledge would impair implicit and explicit evaluations of one’s own and other’s social behavior

36. 3. Central Motive and Emotional states • Limbic and paralimbic structures

37. 3. Central motive and emotional states • Limbic and paralimbic regions- monitor bodily homeostasis and underlie elementary emotional or motivational 'states'. • How does this relate morality? • Authors state that morality would be reduced to a meaningless concept if it were stripped from its motivational and emotional aspects

38. Central motive and emotional states • The concept of central motive states is an influential account of the basic mechanisms of motivation. • Together with other limbic/paralimbic and brainstem structures, hypothalamic activity has a central role in 'undirected' emotionality • Including sexual arousal, social attachment, hunger, aggression and extremes of pleasantness

39. Central motive and emotional states • Central motive states are different from Basic Emotions • Basic emotions- a collection of emotions that are shared by most mammals that can readily be recognized from facial expressions, voice intonation, gestures and body posture • such as fear and disgust. • Basic emotions emerge by temporal binding of context representations(perceiving the feared object or situation) and the central motive state itself (undirected anxiety).

40. EFEC Framework Predictions • Dysfunction of the limbic or paralimbic regions is predicted to cause an exaggeration or reduction of basic motivational and emotional states • Thus, affecting moral behavior • Lesions of the hypothalamus, septal nuclei, basal forebrain and neighboring structures are predicted to produce gross distortions of the valence of moral values, attitudes and moral emotions. • In line with the observation of unprovoked rage, lack of empathy and abnormal sexual behaviors following isolated damage to limbic and paralimbic regions

41. EFEC Framework Predictions • Timing of when damage was caused also plays a role: • Lesions in adulthood: • Gross changes in motivational relevance of behaviors, in spite of preserved knowledge of social rules • Early developmental disorders in these areas: • Abnormal social learning • Abnormal behaviors in these patients do not result from impaired inhibitory mechanisms, but from a lack of emotional empathy, or increased aggression or sexual drive, for example.