The self as a moral agent: Linking the neural bases of social agency and moral sensitivity

Social Neuroscience

Volumn 2, Issue 3-4, 2007, Pages 336-352

  Moll, Jorge ^a,b   de Oliveira Souza, Ricardo ^b,c   Garrido, Griselda J ^d   Bramati, Ivanei E ^b   Caparelli Daquer, Egas M A ^b,c   Paiva, Mirella L M F ^a   Zahn, Roland ^a   Grafman, Jordan ^a  

^a NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH   (United States)

^b LABS D'Or Hospital Network   (Brazil)

^c HOSPITAL UNIVERSITÁRIO GAFFRÉE E GUINLE   (Brazil)

^d HOSPITAL ISRAELITA ALBERT EINSTEIN   (Brazil)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ADULT; AMYGDALOID NUCLEUS; ARTICLE; BRAIN FUNCTION; BRAIN REGION; COGNITION; CONTROLLED STUDY; EMOTION; EMPATHY; FEMALE; FUNCTIONAL ASSESSMENT; FUNCTIONAL MAGNETIC RESONANCE IMAGING; GUILT; HATE; HIPPOCAMPUS; HUMAN; HUMAN EXPERIMENT; INSULA; MALE; MORALITY; MOTIVATION; NORMAL HUMAN; PREFRONTAL CORTEX; SOCIAL BEHAVIOR; SUBICULUM; TEMPORAL CORTEX;

ADOLESCENT; ADULT; BRAIN; BRAIN MAPPING; EMOTIONS; FEMALE; HUMANS; INTERPERSONAL RELATIONS; MALE; MORAL DEVELOPMENT; MORALS; NERVE NET; SELF CONCEPT; SOCIAL PERCEPTION;

EID: 34447525749     PISSN: 17470919     EISSN: 17470927     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/17470910701392024     Document Type: Article

References (77)

1. Allport, G. W. (1954) The nature of prejudice, Beacon Press, Boston
2. Aron, A., Fisher, H., Mashek, D. J., Strong, G., Li, H. and Brown, L. L. (2005) Reward, motivation, and emotion systems associated with early stage, intense, romantic love. Journal of Neurophysiology, 94, pp. 327-337.
3. Bandura, A. (2006) Toward a psychology of human agency. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 1, pp. 164-180.
4. Bartels, A. and Zeki, S. (2004) The neural correlates of maternal and romantic love. NeuroImage, 21, pp. 1155-1166.
5. Batson, C. D., Batson, J. G., Slingsby, J. K., Harrell, K. L., Peekna, H. M. and Todd, R. M. (1991) Empathic joy and the empathy-altruism hypothesis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 61, pp. 413-426.
6. Beer, J. S., Heerey, E. A., Keltner, D., Scabini, D. and Knight, R. T. (2003) The regulatory function of self-conscious emotion: Insights from patients with orbitofrontal damage. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85, pp. 594-604.
7. Bellgowan, P. S., Bandettini, P. A., van Gelderen, P., Martin, A. and Bodurka, J. (2006) Improved BOLD detection in the medial temporal region using parallel imaging and voxel volume reduction. NeuroImage, 29, pp. 1244-1251.
8. Berthoz, S., Armony, J. L., Blair, R. J. and Dolan, R. J. (2002) An fMRI study of intentional and unintentional (embarrassing) violations of social norms. Brain, 125, pp. 1696-1708.
9. Blair, R. J., Morris, J. S., Frith, C. D., Perrett, D. I. and Dolan, R. J. (1999) Dissociable neural responses to facial expressions of sadness and anger. Brain, 122:5, pp. 883-893.
10. Blakemore, S. J. and Frith, U. (2004) How does the brain deal with the social world?. Neuroreport, 15, pp. 119-128.
11. Blakemore, S. J., Winston, J. and Frith, U. (2004) Social cognitive neuroscience: Where are we heading?. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 8, pp. 216-222.
12. Botvinick, M., Nystrom, L. E., Fissell, K., Carter, C. S. and Cohen, J. D. (1999) Conflict monitoring versus selection-for-action in anterior cingulate cortex. Nature, 402, pp. 179-181.
13. Chorvat, T. and McCabe, K. (2004) The brain and the law. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences, 359, pp. 1727-1736.
14. Christoff, K. and Gabrieli, J. D. E. (2000) The frontopolar cortex and human cognition: Evidence for a rostrocaudal hierarchical organization within the human prefrontal cortex. Psychobiology, 28, pp. 168-186.
15. Decety, J. and Jackson, P. L. (2004) The functional architecture of human empathy. Behavioral and Cognitive Neuroscience Reviews, 3, pp. 71-100.
16. Decety, J. and Sommerville, J. A. (2003) Shared representations between self and other: A social cognitive neuroscience view. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7, pp. 527-533.
17. Deichmann, R., Gottfried, J. A., Hutton, C. and Turner, R. (2003) Optimized EPI for fMRI studies of the orbitofrontal cortex. NeuroImage, 19, pp. 430-441.
18. Ouden, H. E. den, Frith, U., Frith, C. and Blakemore, S. J. (2005) Thinking about intentions. NeuroImage, 28, pp. 787-796.
19. Drevets, W. C., Ongur, D. and Price, J. L. (1998) Neuroimaging abnormalities in the subgenual prefrontal cortex: Implications for the pathophysiology of familial mood disorders. Molecular Psychiatry, 3, pp. 220-226.
20. Eisenberg, N. (2000) Emotion regulation and moral development. Annual Review of Psychology, 51, pp. 665-697.
21. Eisenberger, N. I., Lieberman, M. D. and Williams, K. D. (2003) Does rejection hurt? An fMRI study of social exclusion. Science, 302, pp. 290-292.
22. Eslinger, P. J., Flaherty-Craig, C. V. and Benton, A. L. (2004) Developmental outcomes after early prefrontal cortex damage. Brain and Cognition, 55, pp. 84-103.
23. Fessler, D. (1999) Toward an understanding of the universality of second order emotions. Beyond nature or nurture: Biocultural approaches to the emotions, pp. 75-116. Cambridge University Press, New York
24. Freedman, L. J., Insel, T. R. and Smith, Y. (2000) Subcortical projections of area 25 (subgenual cortex) of the macaque monkey. Journal of Comparative Neurology, 421, pp. 172-188.
25. Frith, C. and Frith, U. (2005) Theory of mind. Current Biology, 15, pp. R644-R646.
26. Frith, U. and Frith, C. D. (2003) Development and neurophysiology of mentalizing. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences, 358, pp. 459-473.
27. Gallese, V., Keysers, C. and Rizzolatti, G. (2004) A unifying view of the basis of social cognition. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 8, pp. 396-403.
28. Goodenough, O. R. and Prehn, K. (2004) A neuroscientific approach to normative judgment in law and justice. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences, 359, pp. 1709-1726.
29. Gosselin, N., Samson, S., Adolphs, R., Noulhiane, M., Roy, M. and Hasboun, D. (2006) Emotional responses to unpleasant music correlates with damage to the parahippocampal cortex. Brain, 129, pp. 2585-2592.
30. Gusnard, D. A., Akbudak, E., Shulman, G. L. and Raichle, M. E. (2001) Medial prefrontal cortex and self-referential mental activity: Relation to a default mode of brain function. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, 98, pp. 4259-4264.
31. Gusnard, D. A. and Raichle, M. E. (2001) Searching for a baseline: functional imaging and the resting human brain. Nature Reviews. Neuroscience, 2, pp. 685-694.
32. Haidt, J. (2001) The emotional dog and its rational tail: A social intuitionist approach to moral judgment. Psychological Review, 108, pp. 814-834.
33. Haidt, J. (2003) The moral emotions. Handbook of affective sciences, pp. 852-870. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK
34. Happé, F. (2003) Theory of mind and the self. Annals of the New York Academy of Science, 1001, pp. 134-144.
35. Harris, N. (2003) Reassessing the dimensionality of the moral emotions. British Journal of Psychology, 94, pp. 457-473.
36. Heekeren, H. R., Wartenburger, I., Schmidt, H., Prehn, K., Schwintowski, H. P. and Villringer, A. (2005) Influence of bodily harm on neural correlates of semantic and moral decision-making. NeuroImage, 24, pp. 887-897.
37. Iacoboni, M. (2005) Neural mechanisms of imitation. Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 15, pp. 632-637.
38. Insel, T. R. and Young, L. J. (2001) The neurobiology of attachment. Nature Reviews. Neuroscience, 2, pp. 129-136.
39. Kringelbach, M. L. (2005) The human orbitofrontal cortex: Linking reward to hedonic experience. Nat Rev Neurosci, 6, pp. 691-702.
40. Kringelbach, M. L. and Rolls, E. T. (2004) The functional neuroanatomy of the human orbitofrontal cortex: Evidence from neuroimaging and neuropsychology. Progress in Neurobiology, 72, pp. 341-372.
41. Liotti, M., Mayberg, H. S., Brannan, S. K., McGinnis, S., Jerabek, P. and Fox, P. T. (2000) Differential limbic-cortical correlates of sadness and anxiety in healthy subjects: Implications for affective disorders. Biological Psychiatry, 48, pp. 30-42.
42. Martin, A. and Weisberg, J. (2003) Neural foundations for understanding social and mechanical concepts. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 20, pp. 575-587.
43. Mayberg, H. S., Liotti, M., Brannan, S. K., McGinnis, S., Mahurin, R. K. and Jerabek, P. A. (1999) Reciprocal limbic-cortical function and negative mood: Converging PET findings in depression and normal sadness. American Journal of Psychiatry, 156, pp. 675-682.
44. Moll, J., de Oliveira-Souza, R., Bramati, I. E. and Grafman, J. (2002) Functional networks in emotional moral and nonmoral social judgments. NeuroImage, 16, pp. 696-703.
45. Moll, J., de Oliveira-Souza, R. and Eslinger, P. J. (2003) Morals and the human brain: A working model. Neuroreport, 14, pp. 299-305.
46. Moll, J., de Oliveira-Souza, R., Eslinger, P. J., Bramati, I. E., Mourao-Miranda, J. and Andreivolo, P. A. (2002) The neural correlates of moral sensitivity: A functional magnetic resonance imaging investigation of basic and moral emotions. Journal of Neuroscience, 22, pp. 2730-2736.
47. Moll, J., de Oliveira-Souza, R., Moll, F. T., Ignacio, F. A., Bramati, I. E. and Caparelli-Daquer (2005) The moral affiliations of disgust: A functional MRI study. Cognitive and Behavioral Neurology, 18, pp. 68-78.
48. Moll, J., de Oliveira-Souza, R., Zahn, R. and Grafman, J. Moral psychology. Vol. 3: Morals and the brain, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA
49. Moll, J., Eslinger, P. J. and de Oliveira-Souza, R. (2001) Frontopolar and anterior temporal cortex activation in a moral judgment task: preliminary functional MRI results in normal subjects. Arquivos de Neuro-psiquiatria, 59, pp. 657-664.
50. Moll, J., Krueger, F., Zahn, R., Pardini, M., de Oliveira-Souza, R. and Grafman, J. (2006) Human fronto-mesolimbic networks guide decisions about charitable donation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 103, pp. 15623-15628.
51. Moll, J., Zahn, R., de Oliveira-Souza, R., Krueger, F. and Grafman, J. (2005) Opinion: The neural basis of human moral cognition. Nature Reviews. Neuroscience, 6, pp. 799-809.
52. Nauta, W. J. (1960) Limbic system and hypothalamus: Anatomical aspects. Physiol Rev Suppl, 4, pp. 102-104.
53. Northoff, G. and Bermpohl, F. (2004) Cortical midline structures and the self. Trends in Cognitive Science, 8, pp. 102-107.
54. O'Doherty, J., Kringelbach, M. L., Rolls, E. T., Hornak, J. and Andrews, C. (2001) Abstract reward and punishment representations in the human orbitofrontal cortex. Nature Neuroscience, 4, pp. 95-102.
55. Öngür, D., Ferry, A. T. and Price, J. L. (2003) Architectonic subdivision of the human orbital and medial prefrontal cortex. The Journal of Comparative Neurology, 460, pp. 425-449.
56. Pietrini, P., Guazzelli, M., Basso, G., Jaffe, K. and Grafman, J. (2000) Neural correlates of imaginal aggressive behavior assessed by positron emission tomography in healthy subjects. American Journal of Psychiatry, 157, pp. 1772-1781.
57. Raichle, M. E. and Gusnard, D. A. (2005) Intrinsic brain activity sets the stage for expression of motivated behavior. Journal of Comparative Neurology, 493, pp. 167-176.
58. Ramnani, N. and Owen, A. M. (2004) Anterior prefrontal cortex: Insights into function from anatomy and neuroimaging. Nature Reviews. Neuroscience, 5, pp. 184-194.
59. Rolls, E. T., Hornak, J., Wade, D. and McGrath, J. (1994) Emotion-related learning in patients with social and emotional changes associated with frontal lobe damage. Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry, 57, pp. 1518-1524.
60. Rozin, P., Lowery, L., Imada, S. and Haidt, J. (1999) The CAD triad hypothesis: A mapping between three moral emotions (contempt, anger, disgust) and three moral codes (community, autonomy, divinity). Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 76, pp. 574-586.
61. Ruby, P. and Decety, J. (2001) Effect of subjective perspective taking during simulation of action: A PET investigation of agency. Nature Neuroscience, 4, pp. 546-550.
62. Ruby, P. and Decety, J. (2004) How would you feel versus how do you think she would feel? A neuroimaging study of perspective-taking with social emotions. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 16, pp. 988-999.
63. Schulkin, J. (2000) Roots of social sensitivity and neural function, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA
64. Schulkin, J. (2004) Bodily sensibility: Intelligent action, Oxford University Press, New York
65. Schultz, W. (2000) Multiple reward signals in the brain. Nature Reviews. Neuroscience, 1, pp. 199-207.
66. Schultz, W., Dayan, P. and Montague, P. R. (1997) A neural substrate of prediction and reward. Science, 275, pp. 1593-1599.
67. Shin, L. M., Dougherty, D. D., Orr, S. P., Pitman, R. K., Lasko, M. and Macklin, M. L. (2000) Activation of anterior paralimbic structures during guilt-related script-driven imagery. Biological Psychiatry, 48, pp. 43-50.
68. Singer, T. (2004) Empathy for pain involves the affective but not sensory components of pain. Science, 303, pp. 1157-1162.
69. Singer, W. (2001) Consciousness and the binding problem. Annals of the New York Academy of Science, 929, pp. 123-146.
70. Takahashi, H., Yahata, N., Koeda, M., Matsuda, T., Asai, K. and Okubo, Y. (2004) Brain activation associated with evaluative processes of guilt and embarrassment: An fMRI study. NeuroImage, 23, pp. 967-974.
71. Tangney, J. P. (2002) Self-conscious emotions: The self as a moral guide. Self and motivation: Emerging psychological perspectives, pp. 97-117. American Psychological Association, Washington, DC
72. Tremblay, L. and Schultz, W. (1999) Relative reward preference in primate orbitofrontal cortex. Nature, 398, pp. 704-708.
73. Vogt, B. A. (2005) Pain and emotion interactions in subregions of the cingulate gyrus. Nature Reviews. Neuroscience, 6, pp. 533-544.
74. Wood, J. N. and Grafman, J. (2003) Human prefrontal cortex: Processing and representational perspectives. Nature Reviews. Neuroscience, 4, pp. 139-147.
75. Worsley, K. J., Marrett, S., Neelin, P., Vandal, A. C., Friston, K. J. and Evans, A. C. (1996) A unified statistical approach for determining significant signals in images of cerebral activation. Human Brain Mapping, 4, pp. 58-73.
76. Young, L. J. and Wang, Z. (2004) The neurobiology of pair bonding. Nature Neuroscience, 7, pp. 1048-1054.
77. Zeki, S. and Goodenough, O. (2004) Law and the brain: Introduction. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences, 359, pp. 1661-1665.