The Developmental Neuroscience of Moral Sensitivity

2020

We chart how neuroscience and philosophy have together advanced our understanding of moral judgment with implications for when it goes well or poorly. The field initially focused on brain areas associated with reason versus emotion in the moral evaluations of sacrificial dilemmas. But new threads of research have studied a wider range of moral evaluations and how they relate to models of brain development and learning. By weaving these threads together, we are developing a better understanding of the neurobiology of moral judgment in adulthood and to some extent in childhood and adolescence. Combined with rigorous evidence from psychology and careful philosophical analysis, neuroscientific evidence can even help shed light on the extent of moral knowledge and on ways to promote healthy moral development.

Empathy and sympathy play crucial roles in much of human social interaction and are necessary components for healthy coexistence. Sympathy is thought to be a proxy for motivating prosocial behavior and providing the affective and motivational base for moral development. The purpose of the present study was to use functional MRI to characterize developmental changes in brain activation in the neural circuits underpinning empathy and sympathy. Fifty-seven individuals, whose age ranged from 7 to 40 years old, were presented with short animated visual stimuli depicting painful and non-painful situations. These situations involved either a person whose pain was accidentally caused or a person whose pain was intentionally inflicted by another individual to elicit empathic (feeling as the other) or sympathetic (feeling concern for the other) emotions, respectively. Results demonstrate monotonic age-related changes in the amygdala, supplementary motor area, and posterior insula when participants were exposed to painful situations that were accidentally caused. When participants observed painful situations intentionally inflicted by another individual, age-related changes were detected in the dorsolateral prefrontal and ventromedial prefrontal cortex, with a gradual shift in that latter region from its medial to its lateral portion. This pattern of activation reflects a change from a visceral emotional response critical for the analysis of the affective significance of stimuli to a more evaluative function. Further, these data provide evidence for partially distinct neural mechanisms subserving empathy and sympathy, and demonstrate the usefulness of a developmental neurobiological approach to the new emerging area of moral neuroscience.

Developmental Science, 2009

Empathy and sympathy play crucial roles in much of human social interaction and are necessary components for healthy coexistence. Sympathy is thought to be a proxy for motivating prosocial behavior and providing the affective and motivational base for moral development. The purpose of the present study was to use functional MRI to characterize developmental changes in brain activation in the neural circuits underpinning empathy and sympathy. Fifty-seven individuals, whose age ranged from 7 to 40 years old, were presented with short animated visual stimuli depicting painful and non-painful situations. These situations involved either a person whose pain was accidentally caused or a person whose pain was intentionally inflicted by another individual to elicit empathic (feeling as the other) or sympathetic (feeling concern for the other) emotions, respectively. Results demonstrate monotonic age-related changes in the amygdala, supplementary motor area, and posterior insula when participants were exposed to painful situations that were accidentally caused. When participants observed painful situations intentionally inflicted by another individual, age-related changes were detected in the dorsolateral prefrontal and ventromedial prefrontal cortex, with a gradual shift in that latter region from its medial to its lateral portion. This pattern of activation reflects a change from a visceral emotional response critical for the analysis of the affective significance of stimuli to a more evaluative function. Further, these data provide evidence for partially distinct neural mechanisms subserving empathy and sympathy, and demonstrate the usefulness of a developmental neurobiological approach to the new emerging area of moral neuroscience.

Frontiers in Psychology, 2018

The social brain is the cornerstone that effectively negotiates and navigates complex social environments and relationships. When mature, these social abilities facilitate the interaction and cooperation with others. Empathy, morality, and justice, among others, are all closely intertwined, yet the relationships between them are quite complex. They are fundamental components of our human nature, and shape the landscape of our social lives. The various facets of empathy, including affective arousal/emotional sharing, empathic concern, and perspective taking, have unique contributions as subcomponents of morality. This review helps understand how basic forms of empathy, morality, and justice are substantialized in early ontogeny. It provides valuable information as to gain new insights into the underlying neurobiological precursors of the social brain, enabling future translation toward therapeutic and medical interventions.

… in the brain: emotion, disease and …, 2007

Humans use signifi cant amounts of effort in assessing the appropriateness of their own and other individuals' behaviors. Moral emotions play a central role in both implicit and explicit moral appraisals, being an essential ingredient for human social cognition (Eisenberg, 2000; Fessler, 1999, 2001, 2004; Haidt 2003b). Nevertheless, the psychological structure and neural organization of moral emotions remain underspecifi ed. Here we describe a framework that relates shared and distinctive phenomenological characteristics of moral emotions to a set of cognitive and emotional components. Based on clinical evidence and functional imaging studies (Beer,

Journal of …, 2002

Humans are endowed with a natural sense of fairness that permeates social perceptions and interactions. This moral stance is so ubiquitous that we may not notice it as a fundamental component of daily decision making and in the workings of many legal, political, and social systems. ...

Child Development Perspectives, 2008

The moral neurosciences are an emerging area of research that has the potential to improve our understanding of the biological basis of morality. Thus far, however, research on moral neuroscience and moral judgment development has proceeded independently and with little interconnection. The current article discusses how morality has been defined and assessed in several new and prominent lines of research in the moral neurosciences and in research over the past 30 years on moral judgment development. It discusses how the 2 lines of research could be better integrated and points to strengths and limitations in the current field. Finally, suggestions are provided for further research.

The present study examined neural responses associated with moral sensitivity in adolescents with a background of early social deprivation. Using high-density electroencephalography (hdEEG), brain activity was measured during an intentional inference task, which assesses rapid moral decision-making regarding intentional or unintentional harm to people and objects. We compared the responses to this task in a socially deprived group (DG) with that of a control group (CG). The event-related potentials (ERPs) results showed atypical early and late frontal cortical markers associated with attribution of intentionality during moral decision-making in DG (especially regarding intentional harm to people). The source space of the hdEEG showed reduced activity for DG compared with CG in the right prefrontal cortex, bilaterally in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), and right insula. Moreover, the reduced response in vmPFC for DG was predicted by higher rates of externalizing problems. These findings demonstrate the importance of the social environment in early moral development, supporting a prefrontal maturation model of social deprivation.

Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2001

Within the perception-action framework, the underlying mechanisms of empathy and its related processes of moral behavior need to be investigated. fMRI studies have shown different frontal cortex activation patterns during automatic processing and judgment tasks when stimuli have moral content. Clinical neuropsychological studies reveal different patterns of empathic alterations after dorsolateral versus orbital frontal cortex damage, related to deficient cognitive and emotional processing. These processing streams represent different neural levels and mechanisms underlying empathy.

Handbook of NeuroethicsEdition: Volume 1, 2015

A sense of morality forms the fabric of human societies. There is an ongoing debate whether the cognitive and emotional sources of moral decisions might be closely related to theory of mind, an abstract–cognitive capacity, and empathy, an automatic–affective capacity. That is, moral decisions are believed to imply representation of other individuals’ thoughts and emotional states, respectively. Moreover, it has been noticed that neural activation patterns during moral cognition are very similar to the brain areas engaged during mind-wandering, i.e., neural correlates of an endogenously controlled state in the absence of a specific mental task. Investigation of the neural substrates underlying moral cognition was greatly facilitated by the advent of neuroimaging techniques. This growing number of observation on brain activation patterns during the aforementioned tasks now provides rich substrates for a quantitative integration of the current literature. Such large-scale integration, identifying brain areas consistently engaged by moral, social, empathic, and unconstrained cognition, then provides a quantitative basis for the comparison of their neuronal implementation. This chapter thus quantitatively assesses and reviews the neurobiological relationship between the moral network and the neural networks subserving theory of mind, empathy, and unconstrained cognition. In conclusion, the neural network subserving moral decisions probably reflects functional integration of distributed heterogeneous networks, is dissociable into cognitive and affective components, as well as highly similar to the brain’s default activity pattern.

Springer Handbook of Neuroethics, 2013

A sense of morality forms the fabric of human societies. There is an ongoing debate whether the cognitive and emotional sources of moral decisions might be closely related to theory of mind, an abstract-cognitive capacity, and empathy, an automatic-affective capacity. That is, moral decisions are believed to imply representation of other individuals’ thoughts and emotional states, respectively. Moreover, it has been noticed that neural activation patterns during moral cognition are very similar to the brain areas engaged during mind-wandering, i.e., neural correlates of an endogenously controlled state in the absence of a specific mental task. Investigation of the neural substrates underlying moral cognition was greatly facilitated by the advent of neuroimaging techniques. This growing number of observation on brain activation patterns during the aforementioned tasks now provides rich substrates for a quantitative integration of the current literature. Such large-scale integration, identifying brain areas consistently engaged by moral, social, empathic, and unconstrained cognition, then provides a quantitative basis for the comparison of their neuronal implementation. This chapter thus quantitatively assesses and reviews the neurobiological relationship between the moral network and the neural networks subserving theory of mind, empathy, and unconstrained cognition. In conclusion, the neural network subserving moral decisions probably reflects functional integration of distributed heterogeneous networks, is dissociable into cognitive and affective components, as well as highly similar to the brain’s default activity pattern.

Brain Structure and Function, 2012

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