Moral evaluations of harm are instant and emotional

People are able to detect, within a split second, if a hurtful action they are witnessing is intentional or accidental, new research on the brain at the University of Chicago shows.

The study is the first to explain how the brain is hard-wired to recognize when another person is being intentionally harmed. It also provides new insights into how such recognition is connected with emotion and morality, said lead author Jean Decety, the Irving B. Harris Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at UChicago.

“Our data strongly support the notion that determining intentionality is the first step in moral computations,” said Decety, who conducted research on the topic with Stephanie Cacioppo, a research associate (assistant professor) in psychology at UChicago. They published the results in a paper, “The Speed of Morality: A High-Density Electrical Neurological Study,” to be published Dec. 1 and now on early preview in the Journal of Neurophysiology.

The researchers studied adults who watched videos of people who suffered accidental harm (such as being hit with a golf club) and intentional harm (such as being struck with a baseball bat). While watching the videos, brain activity was collected with equipment that accurately maps responses in different regions of the brain and importantly, the timing between these regions. The technique is known as high-density, event-related potentials technology.

The intentional harm sequence produced a response in the brain almost instantly. The study showed that within 60 milliseconds, the right posterior superior temporal sulcus (also known as TPJ area), located in the back of the brain, was first activated, with different activity depending on whether the harm was intentional or accidental. It was followed in quick succession by the amygdala, often linked with emotion, and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (180 milliseconds), the portion of the brain that plays a critical role in moral decision-making.

There was no such response in the amygdala and ventromedial prefrontal cortex when the harm was accidental.

New Studies Show Moral Judgments Quicker, More Extreme than Practical Ones—But Also Flexible

Judgments we make with a moral underpinning are made more quickly and are more extreme than those same judgments based on practical considerations, a new set of studies finds. However, the findings, which appear in the journal PLOS ONE, also show that judgments based on morality can be readily shifted and made with other considerations in mind.

“Little work has been done on how attaching morality to a particular judgment or decision may affect that outcome,” explains Jay Van Bavel, an assistant professor in New York University’s Department of Psychology and one of the study’s co-authors. “Our findings show that we make and see decisions quite differently if they are made with a morality frame. But, despite these differences, there is now evidence that we can shift judgments so they are based on practical, rather than moral, considerations—and vice versa.”

“Our findings suggest that deciding to frame any issue as moral or not may have important consequences,” said co-author Ingrid Haas, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. “Once an issue is declared moral, people’s judgments about that issue become more extreme, and they are more likely to apply those judgments to others.”

“Ultimately, the way that people make decisions is likely to affect their behavior,” said co-author Dominic Packer, an assistant professor at Lehigh University. ”People may act in ways that violate their moral values when they make decisions in terms of pragmatic concerns - dollars and cents - rather than in a moral frame. In ongoing research, we are examining factors that can trigger moral forms of decision making, so that people are more likely to behave in line with their values.”

Scientists identify depression and anxiety biomarker in youths

Scientists have discovered a cognitive biomarker – a biological indicator of a disease – for young adolescents who are at high risk of developing depression and anxiety. Their findings were published in the journal PLOS ONE.

The test for the unique cognitive biomarker, which can be done on a computer, could be used as an inexpensive tool to screen adolescents for common emotional mental illnesses.  As the cognitive biomarker may appear prior to the symptoms of depression and anxiety, early intervention (which has proven to be one of the most effective ways of combatting mental illness) could then be initiated.

For the study, 15-18 year old participants underwent genetic testing and environmental assessment, an exercise which would currently be too expensive and take too long to use as a widespread method of screening.  The adolescents were then given a computer test to gauge how they process emotional information. The test had the participants evaluate whether words were positive, negative or neutral (examples included ‘joyful’ for positive, ‘failure’ for negative, and ‘range’ for neutral).

Those adolescents with a variation of one gene (the short form of the serotonin transporter) as well as exposure to intermittent family arguments for longer than six months and violence between parents before the age of six were shown to have marked difficulty in evaluating the emotion within the words, indicating an inability to process emotional information. Previous research associated a maladjusted perception and response to emotions, as seen here, with a significantly increased risk of depression and anxiety.

Professor Ian Goodyer, Principal Investigator on the study from the University of Cambridge, said:  “Whether we succumb to anxiety and depression depends in part on our tendencies to think well or poorly of ourselves at troubled times. How it comes about that some people see the ‘glass half full’ and think positively whereas other see the ‘glass half empty’ and think negatively about themselves at times of stress is not known.

The evidence is that both our genes and our early childhood experiences contribute to such personal thinking styles. Before there are any clinical symptoms of depression or anxiety, this test reveals a deficient ability to efficiently and effectively perceive emotion processes in some teenagers – a biomarker for low resilience which may lead to mental illnesses.”

In Alzheimer’s Disease, Maintaining Connection and ‘Saving Face’

I’ve decided that all older men with gray beards must look alike, because each week I am mistaken for someone else. But, if I were to shave my beard - which I have worn for over 40 years - I believe that my friends and colleagues would fail to recognize me. I would be a different person to them because of this small, physical change.

If such a small change affects the way people see me, then the larger mental changes that Alzheimer’s patients experience must truly and deeply change the way their loved ones see them. Dr. Daniel Potts, a neurologist at the University of Alabama, has begun studying the concept of “saving face” and preserving the “person” in people with dementia.

Dr. Potts’ father, Lester Potts, became an acclaimed watercolor artist after his Alzheimer’s diagnosis. He had lost his verbal abilities but could express his feelings through his art. This bolstered his retention of self-worth and dignity. His paintbrush let him bypass the part of his brain that Alzheimer’s blocked, and communicate in a new way.

But before we find out more about art and Alzheimer’s patients, let’s go back to the “face” part of saving face for just a moment.

Read more

(Source: The Atlantic)

Relief of Pain is a Reward

Scientists have learned a lot about pain, but this has not led to the discovery of many new medications to help the millions of people whose lives are affected by chronic pain.

In an effort to improve pain management, Frank Porreca, PhD, and his research group from the Department of Pharmacology at the University of Arizona College of Medicine – Tucson have been exploring new preclinical measures that may better reflect features of the human experience of pain and that can be used to find new therapies.

Relief of pain is rewarding, according to Dr. Porreca and his colleagues. They have demonstrated that treatments that relieve the unpleasant feeling of pain also activate reward circuits and reinforce behaviors that result in relief of pain. Their study, “Pain relief produces negative reinforcement through activation of mesolimbic reward/valuation circuitry,” is reported in the Nov. 26 Early Edition issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“Determining how we feel, including knowing if we are in pain, depends on a brain neural representation of information that is gathered by a multitude of sensors that monitor the body and its tissues for local temperature, blood flow, blood pressure, heart rate, pH, carbon dioxide level and other states,” says Dr. Porreca. “These ‘interoceptors’ constantly evaluate and report the state of the body to the brain, generating specific conscious sensations that tell us that we are hungry, thirsty or cold, or that something is wrong. Nociceptors are a special class of interoceptors that produce sensations of pain. They ‘sound the alarm’ to tell us that our tissues have been – or soon may be – damaged.”

Thirst, hunger, itch, cold, heat, pain and other states of imbalance are unpleasant feelings that demand a behavioral response to correct the problem, Dr. Porreca says. If you feel cold, you want to get warm; if you are thirsty, you want to drink; if you are in pain, you want relief.

What motivates an organism to respond to these feelings? Things that are essential to the life of an organism or the survival of the species, such as food or drink, are rewarding. Rewards activate neural circuits in the brain and produce pleasant and positive feelings that reinforce behaviors that increase our ability to survive, notes Dr. Porreca.

The UA researchers have demonstrated that treatments that relieve the unpleasant feeling of pain also result in activation of these same reward circuits and reinforce behaviors that result in relief of pain. The novel demonstration of pain relief as a reward provides an entirely new way to discover medicines for patients.

“The activation of the reward circuit by pain relief provides an output measure for assessment of the potential effectiveness of novel molecular targets,” Dr. Porreca explains. “The activation of these ancient and evolutionarily conserved circuits by pain relief can serve as a basis for translation of treatments that will likely be effective in humans.”

Seeing the world through the eyes of an Orangutan

Dr Neil Mennie, from The University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus (UNMC), has received funding from Ministry of Science and Technology and Innovation, Malaysia (MOSTI) to study the eye movements of Tsunami — a seven year old orangutan at The National Zoo of Malaysia (Zoo Negara). Not only will Dr Mennie’s research address vital questions about the visual cognition of humans and apes in natural tasks, it will also provide valuable enrichment for the juvenile captive-born orangutan.

Dr Mennie said: “Orangutans are particularly interesting because to survive in the treetops they must be very spatially aware of their surroundings. I hope to investigate their ability to search for food and to compare their progress with humans in 3D search and foraging tasks.

Dr Mennie, who is from the Cognitive and Sensory Systems Research Group in the School of Psychology at UNMC, is interested in how humans and apes use their brains to learn and make predictions about our surroundings. With the help of Tsunami’s keeper, Mohd Sharullizam Ramli, and the special eye tracking equipment that is worn over her head and shoulders, Dr Mennie has spent the last year recording Tsunami’s eye and body movements during the performance of complex actions such as locomotion, foraging for food and manipulation of small objects.

Researchers Study Cry Acoustics of Infants to Determine Risk for Autism

Autism is a poorly understood family of related conditions. People with autism generally lack normal social interaction skills and engage in a variety of unusual and often characteristic behaviors, such as repetitive movements. While there is no specific medical treatment for autism, some success has been shown with early behavioral intervention.

Understanding the importance of early diagnosis, researchers at Women & Infants’Brown Center for the Study of Children at Riskin collaboration with researchers at University of Pittsburgh have been studying the cry acoustics of six-month-old infants. Their research has recently been published in Autism Research.

“Because we can measure various aspects of babies’ cries from the earliest days of life, it may be possible to use this technique to identify risk for neurological problems such as autism long before we can detect behavioral differences,” said Stephen J. Sheinkopf, PhD, lead researcher, psychologist at the Brown Center for the Study of Children at Risk, and assistant professor (research) in the Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior at The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University.

The study examined ways in which infants at risk for autism produced cries as compared to the cries of low-risk infants. Recordings of babies’ cries were excerpted from vocal and video recordings of six-month-old infants at risk for autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and those with low risk. Infants were considered to be at risk if they had an older sibling with a confirmed ASD diagnosis.

Cries were categorized as either pain related or non-pain related based on observations of the videotapes. At-risk infants produced pain related cries with higher and more variable fundamental frequency (commonly referred to as “pitch”) as compared to low-risk infants. A small number of the at-risk infants were later diagnosed with an ASD at 36 months of age. The cries for these babies had among the highest fundamental frequency values and also differed in other acoustic characteristics.

“These findings demonstrate the potential of this approach for babies as young as six months of age,” said Dr. Sheinkopf.

(Photo: Thinkstock Source: Getty Images)

Researchers find reading uses the same brain regions regardless of language

A team of French and Taiwanese researchers has found evidence to indicate that people use the same regions of the brain when reading, regardless of which language is being read. In their paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, they describe how fMRI brain scans made while people were reading revealed that there are very few differences in how the brain works as reading occurs.

The researchers note that previous research has suggested that different neural networks might be involved when people read text written in very different types of languages. French, for example, is an alphabetic language, whereas Chinese is logographic. Those of Roman origin are based on abstract concepts while Chinese characters are based on realistic depictions of handwriting strokes.

To learn more, the researchers ran fMRI scans on volunteers reading either Chinese or French material as their native language. The material presented was shown in various forms, e.g. normal, static, backwards or distorted. The researchers also employed priming, which is where words are flashed on a screen for such a short period of time as to be unknown to the reader. Priming has been found to influence the rate at which readers recognize words that are shown thereafter for a normal duration of time. The material written in French was presented as cursive rather than block printed letters.

In analyzing the results, the researchers found the differences in brain activity between the two groups as they read to be minimal. Those differences that were found, centered around a slight increase in the brain regions associated with processing the physical movements that had occurred in creating the characters, which in the brain is recognized as motor skills.

The researchers suggest that their results indicate that because reading is a relatively new process for the human brain, it likely evolved using previously existing neural network circuitry, which would explain why it appears the brain works in roughly the same way when reading, regardless of language.