The ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) is crucial for moral behavior, yet the mechanism through which the VMPFC promotes moral behavior remains unclear. In this article, we emphasize that moral choice is often intertemporal, requiring foregoing short-term gains in favor of future outcomes of larger value. We propose that the VMPFC may be necessary for mental time travel (MTT), a cognitive process enabling vivid preexperiencing of future outcomes. By providing anticipated outcomes that inform decisions, MTT may promote farsighted, (...) moral behaviors. (shrink)

Moral judgments, whether delivered in ordinary experience or in the courtroom, depend on our ability to infer intentions. We forgive unintentional or accidental harms and condemn failed attempts to harm. Prior work demonstrates that patients with damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex deliver abnormal judgments in response to moral dilemmas and that these patients are especially impaired in triggering emotional responses to inferred or abstract events, as opposed to real or actual outcomes. We therefore predicted that VMPC (...) patients would deliver abnormal moral judgments of harmful intentions in the absence of harmful outcomes, as in failed attempts to harm. This prediction was confirmed in the current study: VMPC patients judged attempted harms, including attempted murder, as more morally permissible relative to controls. These results highlight the critical role of the VMPC in processing harmful intent for moral judgment. (shrink)

Trends in moral psychology largely support the role that emotion plays in moral cognition with human lesion studies offering the most compelling evidence to date. Specifically, data from ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) patients on moral judgment tasks has suggested the necessity of having intact emotion to behave in morally appropriate ways. However, patients with vmPFC damage also have deficits in a variety of complex judgment and decision-making tasks, regardless of whether emotion is involved. This paper argues that (...) a basic information processing perspective of vmPFC functionality is a better interpretation of vmPFC patient deficits, specifically with the vmPFC being necessary for value assessment rather than being specific to emotion. (shrink)

Own-age bias is a well-known bias reflecting the effects of age, and its role has been demonstrated, particularly, in face recognition. However, it remains unclear whether an own-age bias exists in facial impression formation. In the present study, we used three datasets from two published and one unpublished functional magnetic resonance imaging study that employed the same pleasantness rating task with fMRI scanning and preferential choice task after the fMRI to investigate whether healthy young and older participants showed own-age effects (...) in face preference. Specifically, we employed a drift-diffusion model to elaborate the existence of own-age bias in the processes of preferential choice. The behavioral results showed higher rating scores and higher drift rate for young faces than for older faces, regardless of the ages of participants. We identified a young-age effect, but not an own-age effect. Neuroimaging results from aggregation analysis of the three datasets suggest a possibility that the ventromedial prefrontal cortex was associated with evidence accumulation of own-age faces; however, no clear evidence was provided. Importantly, we found no age-related decline in the responsiveness of the vmPFC to subjective pleasantness of faces, and both young and older participants showed a contribution of the vmPFC to the parametric representation of the subjective value of face and functional coupling between the vmPFC and ventral visual area, which reflects face preference. These results suggest that the preferential choice of face is less susceptible to the own-age bias across the lifespan of individuals. (shrink)

The music and social bonding (MSB) hypothesis suggests that damage to brain regions in the proposed neurobiological model, including the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), would disrupt the social and emotional effects of music. This commentary evaluates prior research in persons with vmPFC damage in light of the predictions put forth by the MSB hypothesis.

& Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we examined whether individual differences in amygdala activation in response to negative relative to neutral information are related to differences in the speed with which such information is evaluated, the extent to which such differences are associated with medial prefrontal cortex function, and their relationship with measures of trait anxiety and psychological well-being (PWB). Results indicated that faster judgments of negative relative to neutral information were associated with increased left and right amygdala (...) activation. In the prefrontal cortex, faster judgment time was associated with relative decreased activation in a cluster in the ventral anterior cingulate cor-. (shrink)

The psychological and neurobiological processes underlying moral judgement have been the focus of many recent empirical studies1–11. Of central interest is whether emotions play a causal role in moral judgement, and, in parallel, how emotion-related areas of the brain contribute to moral judgement. Here we show that six patients with focal bilateral damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPC), a brain region necessary for the normal generation of emotions and, in particular, social emotions12–14, produce an abnor- mally (...) ‘utilitarian’ pattern of judgements on moral dilemmas that pit compelling considerations of aggregate welfare against highly emotionally aversive behaviours (for example, having to sacrifice one person’s life to save a number of other lives)7,8. In contrast, the VMPC patients’ judgements were normal in other classes of moral dilemmas. These findings indicate that, for a selective set of moral dilemmas, the VMPC is critical for normal judgements of right and wrong. The findings support a necessary role for emotion in the generation of those judgements. (shrink)

Although trust and reciprocity are ubiquitous in social exchange, their neurobiological substrate remains largely unknown. Here, we investigated the effect of damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC)—a brain region critical for valuing social information—on individuals’ decisions in a trust game and in a risk game. In the trust game, one player, the investor, is endowed with a sum of money, which she can keep or invest. The amount she decides to invest is tripled and sent to (...) the other player, the trustee, who then decides what fraction to return to the investor. In separate runs, ten patients with focal bilateral damage to the vmPFC and control participants made decision while playing in the role of either investor or trustee with different anonymous counterparts in each run. A risk game was also included in which the investor faced exactly the same decisions as in the trust game, but a random device (i.e., a computer), not another player, determined the final payoffs. Results showed that vmPFC patients’ investments were not modulated by the type of opponent player (e.g., human vs. computer) present in the environment. Thus, vmPFC patients showed comparable risk-taking preferences both in social (trust game) and nonsocial (risk game) contexts. In stark contrast, control participants were less willing to take risk and invest when they believed that they were interacting with people than a computer. Furthermore, when acted as trustee, vmPFC patients made lower back transfers toward investors, thereby showing less reciprocity behavior. Taken together, these results indicate that social valuation and emotion subserved by vmPFC have a critical role in trusting and reciprocity decisions. The present findings support the hypothesis that vmPFC damage may impair affective systems specifically designed for mediating social transaction with other individuals. (shrink)

Activity in the prefrontal cortex may distinguish the meta-awareness experienced during lucid dreams from its absence in normal dreams. To examine a possible relationship between dream lucidity and prefrontal task performance, we carried out a prospective study in 28 high school students. Participants performed the Wisconsin Card Sort and Iowa Gambling tasks, then for 1 week kept dream journals and reported sleep quality and lucidity-related dream characteristics. Participants who exhibited a greater degree of lucidity performed significantly better (...) on the task that engages the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, but degree of lucidity achieved did not distinguish performance on the task that engages the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, nor did it distinguish self-reported sleep quality or baseline characteristics. The association between performance on the Iowa Gambling Task and lucidity suggests a connection between lucid dreaming and ventromedial prefrontal function. (shrink)

People are motivated by shared social values that, when held with moral conviction, can serve as compelling mandates capable of facilitating support for ideological violence. The current study examined this dark side of morality by identifying specific cognitive and neural mechanisms associated with beliefs about the appropriateness of sociopolitical violence, and determining the extent to which the engagement of these mechanisms was predicted by moral convictions. Participants reported their moral convictions about a variety of sociopolitical issues prior to undergoing functional (...) MRI scanning. During scanning, they were asked to evaluate the appropriateness of violent protests that were ostensibly congruent or incongruent with their views about sociopolitical issues. Complementary univariate and multivariate analytical strategies comparing neural responses to congruent and incongruent violence identified neural mechanisms implicated in processing salience and in the encoding of subjective value. As predicted, neuro-hemodynamic response was modulated parametrically by individuals’ beliefs about the appropriateness of congruent relative to incongruent sociopolitical violence in ventromedial prefrontal cortex, and by moral conviction in ventral striatum. Overall moral conviction was predicted by neural response to congruent relative to incongruent violence in amygdala. Together, these findings indicate that moral conviction about sociopolitical issues serves to increase their subjective value, overriding natural aversion to interpersonal harm. (shrink)

Patients with damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) are often described as having impaired ability for planning and decision making despite retaining intact capacities for explicit reasoning. The somatic marker hypothesis is that the VMPFC associates implicitly represented affective information with explicit representations of actions or outcomes. Consequently, when the VMPFC is damaged explicit reasoning is no longer scaffolded by affective information, leading to characteristic deficits. These deficits are exemplified in performance on the Iowa Gambling Task (...) (IGT) in which subjects with VMPFC perform significantly worse than neurotypicals in a task which requires them learn from rewarding and punishing experience to make decisions. The somatic marker theory adopts a canonical theory of emotion, in which emotions function as part of a valencing system, to explain the role of affective processes. The first part of the paper argues against this canonical account. The second part provides a different account of the role of the role of the VMPFC in decision-making which does not depend on the canonical account of emotion. Together the first and second parts of the paper provide the basis for a different interpretation of results on the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT). In fact the IGT may be probing a deficit in what has been called mental time travel: the ability to access and use information from previous experience and imaginatively rehearse future experiences as part of the process of deliberation. (shrink)

The exact relationship between qualia and the function of the brain remains elusive. The present approach focuses on the linkage between the neural mechanisms of the brain and the phenomenological and epistemological mechanisms of qualia. It is hypothesized that distinct characteristics of the ventral prefrontal cortical function may be crucial for the generation of these phenomenological and epistemological mechanisms this is reflected in the so-called 'neurophenomenological hypothesis'. The 'phenomenological—qualitative' character of qualia may be related with an early activation in (...) the ventromedial prefrontal cortex . The experience of 'presence' in qualia may be accounted for by a co-activation in both VMPFC and hippocampus and a concurrent deactivation in the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex and posterior cingulate. Past and future temporal dimensions may therefore be integrated within the experience of events, which in turn may account for the phenomenal characteristics of 'presence' and thus 'phenomenal time'. 'Non-structural homogeneity' in the experience of qualia may be accounted for by either 'supramodal character' or 'modality unspecifity' of >the VMPFC. The 'heterogenous' stimuli can therefore be included and integrated within one 'homogenous' event as experienced in qualia. Finally, 'transparency' in the experience of qualia may be related with the 'reciprocal suppression' between VMPFC and VLPFC. Simultaneous cognitive processing during the experience of qualia may be suppressed and may consequently account for their transparent character. Due to several methodological limitations, these 'neurophenomenological hypotheses' must be considered as preliminary. However, they may nevertheless serve as a starting point for the development of a more elaborate neuroscientific hypothesis of qualia in the future. (shrink)

Background: We like to think about sexual activity as something fixed, basic and primal. However, this does not seem to fully capture reality. Even when we relish sex, we may be capable of mentalizing, talking, voluntarily postponing orgasm, and much more. This might indicate that the central control mechanisms of sexual activity are quite flexible and susceptible to learning mechanisms, and that cortical brain areas play a critical part. Objective: This study aimed to identify those cortical areas and mechanisms most (...) consistently implicated in sexual activity. Design: A comprehensive review of the human functional neuroimaging literature on sexual activity, i.e. genital stimulation and orgasm, is made. Results: Genital stimulation recruits the classical somatosensory matrix, but also areas far beyond that. The posterior insula may be particularly important for processing input from the engorged penis and coordinating penile responses. Extrastriate visual cortex tracks sexual arousal and responds to genital stimulation even when subjects have their eyes closed. The ventromedial prefrontal cortex is also tightly coupled to sexual arousal, but low activity in this area predicts high sexual arousal. Conclusion: This review has indicated cortical sites where activity is moderated by tactile genital inflow and high sexual arousal. Behavioral implications are discussed and where possible the relevance for learning mechanisms is indicated. Overall, it is clear that the cerebral cortex has something to say about sexual activity. Keywords: functional neuroimaging; insula; ventromedial prefrontal cortex; extrastriate visual cortex; penis; clitoris; orgasm (Published: 15 March 2012) Citation: Socioaffective Neuroscience & Psychology 2012, 2 : 17337 - DOI: 10.3402/snp.v2i0.17337. (shrink)

This article reviews concepts of, as well as neurocognitive and genetic studies on, empathy. Whereas cognitive empathy can be equated with affective theory of mind, that is, with mentalizing the emotions of others, affective empathy is about sharing emotions with others. The neural circuits underlying different forms of empathy do overlap but also involve rather specific brain areas for cognitive (ventromedial prefrontal cortex) and affective (anterior insula, midcingulate cortex, and possibly inferior frontal gyrus) empathy. Furthermore, behavioral (...) and imaging genetic studies provide evidence for a genetic basis for empathy, indicating a possible role for oxytocin and dopamine as well as for a genetic risk variant for schizophrenia near the gene ZNF804A. (shrink)

Studies of normal individuals reveal an asymmetry in the folk concept of intentional action: an action is more likely to be thought of as intentional when it is morally bad than when it is morally good. One interpretation of these results comes from the hypothesis that emotion plays a critical mediating role in the relationship between an action’s moral status and its intentional status. According to this hypothesis, the negative emotional response triggered by a morally bad action drives the attribution (...) of intent to the actor, or the judgment that the actor acted intentionally. We test this hypothesis by presenting cases of morally bad and morally good action to seven individuals with deficits in emotional processing resulting from damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPC). If normal emotional processing is necessary for the observed asymmetry, then individuals with VMPC lesions should show no asymmetry. Our results provide no support for this hypothesis: like normal individuals, those with VMPC lesions showed the same asymmetry, tending to judge that an action was intentional when it was morally bad but not when it was morally good. Based on this finding, we suggest that normal emotional processing is not responsible for the observed asymmetry of intentional attributions and thus does not mediate the relationship between an action’s moral status and its intentional status. (shrink)

Background: While religious faith remains one of the most significant features of human life, little is known about its relationship to ordinary belief at the level of the brain. Nor is it known whether religious believers and nonbelievers differ in how they evaluate statements of fact. Our lab previously has used functional neuroimaging to study belief as a general mode of cognition, and others have looked specifically at religious belief. However, no research has compared these two states of mind directly. (...) Methodology/Principal Findings: We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to measure signal changes in the brains of thirty subjects - fifteen committed Christians and fifteen nonbelievers - as they evaluated the truth and falsity of religious and nonreligious propositions. For both groups, and in both categories of stimuli, belief was associated with greater signal in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, an area important for self-representation, emotional associations, reward, and goal-driven behavior. This region showed greater signal whether subjects believed statements about God, the Virgin Birth, etc. or statements about ordinary facts. A comparison of both stimulus categories suggests that religious thinking is more associated with brain regions that govern emotion, self-representation, and cognitive conflict, while thinking about ordinary facts is more reliant upon memory retrieval networks. Conclusions/Significance: While religious and nonreligious thinking differentially engage broad regions of the frontal, parietal, and medial temporal lobes, the difference between belief and disbelief appears to be content-independent. Our study compares religious thinking with ordinary cognition and, as such, constitutes a step toward developing a neuropsychology of religion. However, these findings may also further our understanding of how the brain accepts statements of all kinds to be valid descriptions of the world. © 2009 Harris et al. (shrink)

The neural correlates of two hypothesized emotional processing modes, i.e., schematic and propositional modes, were investigated with positron emission tomography. Nineteen subjects performed an emotional mental imagery task while mentally repeating sentences linked to the meaning of the imagery script. In the schematic conditions, participants repeated metaphoric sentences, whereas in the propositional conditions, the sentences were explicit questions about specific emotional appraisals of the imagery scenario. Five types of emotional scripts were proposed to the subjects (happiness, anger, affection, sadness, and (...) a neutral scenario). The results supported the hypothesized distinction between schematic and propositional emotional processing modes. Specifically, schematic mode was associated with increased activity in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex whereas propositional mode was associated with activation of the anterolateral prefrontal cortex. In addition, interaction analyses showed that schematic versus propositional processing of happiness (compared with the neutral scenario) was associated with increased activity in the ventral striatum whereas “schematic anger” was tentatively associated with activation of the ventral pallidum. © 2003 Elsevier Science (USA). All rights reserved. (shrink)

This paper selectively reviews the neurophysiological evidence for shared neural circuits (supposedly implemented by mirror neurons) as the mechanism underlying empathy. I will argue that while the mirror neuron system plays a role in motor resonance, it is not possible to conclude that this system is critically involved in emotion recognition, and there is little evidence for its role in empathy and sympathy. In addition, there is modest support from neurological observations that lesion of the regions involved in the mirror (...) neuron system leads to dysfunction in empathy, whereas damage of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex is associated with such impairment. To significantly advance our understanding of the mechanisms underlying empathy, research needs finer conceptualization, better designed paradigms, and integration with knowledge from lesion studies. (shrink)

Easy of learning judgments occur before active learning begins, and it is a prediction of how difficult it will be to learn new material in future learning. This study compared the amplitude of event-related potential components and brain activation regions between high and low EOL judgments by adopting ERPs with a classical EOL judgment paradigm, aiming to confirm the ease-of-processing hypothesis. The results showed that the magnitudes of EOL judgments are affected by encoding fluency cues, and the judgment magnitude increases (...) with encoding fluency; low EOL judgments are associated with higher N400 amplitude at the left superior frontal gyrus and left middle frontal gyrus. High EOL judgments showed enlarged slow-wave potentials than low EOL judgments at the left medial temporal lobe, right ventromedial prefrontal cortex, and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Our results support the ease-of-processing hypothesis, particularly, by affirming that EOL judgments are affected by encoding fluency in two processing stages. N400 reflects the process of acquiring encoding fluency cues, while slow-wave indicates that individuals use encoding fluency cues for metacognitive monitoring. (shrink)

People who suffer brain damage to their ventromedial prefrontal cortex have a puzzling psychological profile: they seem to retain high intellect and practical reasoning skills after their brain injuries, but continually make poor decisions in many aspects of their lives. Adina Roskies argues that their behavior is explained by the fact that, although VM patients make correct judgments about what they ought to do, they are entirely unmotivated by those judgments. Roskies thus takes VM patients to be (...) real-world counterexamples to motivational internalism: the thesis that, necessarily, if S judges that she ought to φ in circumstances C, then S is somewhat motivated to φ in C. In this paper, however, I argue that the neuropsychological evidence that Roskies appeals to does not actually show that VM patients are entirely unmotivated by their normative judgments. Rather, I argue, the evidence suggests that VM patients form weaker normative judgments than normals during practical deliberation. And this affords the internalist with a plausible explanation for VM patients’ behavior: because VM patients form weaker normative judgments than normals, they are less motivated by their normative judgments than normals, which allows their decision-making to be overruled by their standing desires for greater and more immediate rewards. (shrink)

Though traditional accounts of moral development focus on the development of rational and deliberate thinking, recent work in developmental affective neuroscience suggests that moral cognition is tightly related to affective and emotional processing. Functional magnetic resonance imaging studies show age-related changes in response to empathy-eliciting stimuli, with a gradual shift from the monitoring of somatovisceral responses in young children mediated by the amygdala, insula and medial aspect of the orbitofrontal cortex, to the executive control and evaluation of emotion processing (...) implemented by the ventromedial prefrontal cortex in older participants. These data indicate that the development of moral reasoning involves the increasing integration of empathic emotion-related somatovisceral responses with more complex social-reasoning abilities. (shrink)

The authors present a neurological theory of how cognitive information and emotional information are integrated in the nucleus accumbens during effective decision making. They describe how the nucleus accumbens acts as a gateway to integrate cognitive information from the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and the hippocampus with emotional information from the amygdala. The authors have modeled this integration by a network of spiking artificial neurons organized into separate areas and used this computational model to simulate 2 kinds of (...) cognitive–affective integration. The model simulates successful performance by people with normal cognitive–affective integration. The model also simulates the historical case of Phineas Gage as well as subsequent patients whose ability to make decisions became.. (shrink)

Adolescence is a crucial time for social development, especially for helping and compassionate behaviors; yet brain networks involved in adolescent prosociality and compassion currently remain underexplored. Here, we sought to evaluate a recently proposed domain-general developmental network model of prosocial cognition by relating adolescent functional and structural brain networks with prosocial and compassionate disposition. We acquired resting state fMRI and diffusion MRI from 95 adolescents along with self-report questionnaires assessing prosociality and compassion. We then applied the Network-Based Statistic to inductively (...) investigate whether there is a significant subnetwork related to prosociality and compassion while controlling for age and sex. Based on the Do-GooD model, we expected that this subnetwork would involve connectivity to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex from three domain-general networks, the default mode network, the salience network, and the control network, as well as from the DMN to the mirror neuron systems. NBS revealed a significant functional subnetwork related to prosociality and compassion connecting 31 regions, showing DMN and DLPFC connectivity to the VMPFC; DMN connectivity to mirror neuron systems; and connectivity between the DMN and cerebellum. These findings largely support and extend the Do-GooD model of prosocial cognition in adolescents by further illuminating network-based relationships that have the potential to advance our understanding of brain mechanisms of prosociality. (shrink)

Recent interest in emotion as the basis for moral development began with work involving individuals with psychopathic tendencies, and a recent paper with this population has allowed fresh insights (Glenn, Iyer, Graham, Koleva, & Haidt, 2009). Two main conclusions suggested by this paper are: (i) that systems involved in different forms of morality can be differentiated; and (ii) that systems involved in justice reasoning likely include amygdala and/or ventromedial prefrontal cortex, even if the specifics of their functional (...) contribution to justice development remain unidentified. (shrink)

Well-documented differences in the psychology and behavior of men and women have spurred extensive exploration of gender's role within the brain, particularly regarding emotional processing. While neuroanatomical studies clearly show differences between the sexes, the functional effects of these differences are less understood. Neuroimaging studies have shown inconsistent locations and magnitudes of gender differences in brain hemodynamic responses to emotion. To better understand the neurophysiology of these gender differences, we analyzed recordings of single neuron activity in the human brain as (...) subjects of both genders viewed emotional expressions. This study included recordings of single-neuron activity of 14 (6 male) epileptic patients in four brain areas: amygdala (236 neurons), hippocampus ( n = 270), anterior cingulate cortex ( n = 256), and ventromedial prefrontal cortex ( n = 174). Neural activity was recorded while participants viewed a series of avatar male faces portraying positive, negative or neutral expressions. Significant gender differences were found in the left amygdala, where 23% ( n = 15∕66) of neurons in men were significantly affected by facial emotion, vs. 8% ( n = 6∕76) of neurons in women. A Fisher's exact test comparing the two ratios found a highly significant difference between the two ( p. (shrink)

RESUMEN Diversos estudios han concluido que los pacientes con daño en la Corteza Frontal -CF- o Corteza Prefrontal Ventromedial -CPV- muestran una disposición a herir directamente a otra persona con el fin de salvar varias vidas en sus respuestas a los "dilemas morales personales", revelando una posible carencia de empatía. No obstante, cuando evalúan conductas carentes de empatía sin justificación utilitarista, sus respuestas son normales. Defendemos aquí que los pacientes sufren una deficiencia cognitiva relacionada con la hipótesis de (...) marcador somático de Damasio y con juicios de valor. Criticamos la hipótesis del "paciente utilitarista", que se ha atrincherado en la neurociencia cognitiva. ABSTRACT In their answers to questions regarding "personal moral dilemmas", patients with lesions to the Frontal Cortex -FC- or Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex -vmPFC- display a disposition to directly injure another person in order to save lives, thus revealing a possible lack of empathy. However, their answers are normal when they evaluate behaviors lacking in empathy but without a utilitarian justification. We here defend that those patients suffer from a cognitive deficiency associated with Damasio's somatic marker hypothesis and with value judgments. The article critiques the "utilitarian patient" hypothesis that has become deeply rooted in cognitive neuroscience. RESUMO Diversos estudos têm concluído que os pacientes com danos no Córtex Frontal (CF) ou Córtex Pré-frontal Ventromedial (CPV) mostram uma disposição a ferir diretamente a outra pessoa com o objetivo de salvar várias vidas em suas respostas aos "dilemas morais pessoais", o que revela uma possível carência de empatia. Contudo, quando avaliam condutas carentes de empatia sem justificativa utilitarista, suas respostas são normais. Defendemos aqui que os pacientes sofrem uma deficiência cognitiva relacionada com a hipótese de marcador somático de Damásio e com juízos de valor. Criticamos a hipótese do "paciente utilitarista", que vem se refugiando na neurociência cognitiva. (shrink)

The brain networks underlying human multiple-cue judgment, the judgment of a continuous criterion based on multiple cues, have been examined in a few recent studies, and the ventral precuneus has been found to be a key region. Specifically, activation differences in ventral precuneus (as measured with functional magnetic resonance imaging, fMRI) has been linked to an exemplar-based judgment process, where judgments are based on memory for previous similar cases. What aspects of exemplar-based judgment ventral precuneus supports is however poorly understood. (...) Ventral precuneus is a brain region important for various episodic memory processes, where increased engagement of this region together with the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) and the medial temporal lobes (MTL) during learning have been linked to retrieval success. Several alternatives are plausible, for example that reduced brain activity in ventral precuneus during learning to make exemplar-based judgments could reflect reduced needs for visuo-spatial attention as a function of learning to master the task. The present study used fMRI during a multiple-cue judgment task to gain novel neurocognitive evidence informative for the link between learning-related activity changes in ventral precuneus and exemplar-based judgment. Participants (N = 27) spontaneously learned to make judgments during fMRI, in a multiple-cue judgment task specifically designed to induce exemplar-based processing. Contrasting brain activity during late learning to early learning indeed revealed higher activity in ventral precuneus, the bilateral MTL and the vmPFC. Activity in the ventral precuneus and the vmPFC was found to parametrically increase between each judgment event, and activity levels in the ventral precuneus predicted performance after learning. These results are interpreted such that the ventral precuneus supports the aspects of exemplar-based processes that are related to episodic memory, tentatively by building and retrieving memory representations for judgment. (shrink)

People who habituate to stress show a repetition-induced response attenuation—neuroendocrine, cardiovascular, neuroenergetic, and emotional—when exposed to a threatening environment. But the exact dynamics underlying stress habituation remain obscure. The free energy principle offers a unifying account of self-organising systems such as the human brain. In this paper, we elaborate on how stress habituation can be explained and modelled using the free energy principle. We introduce habituation priors that encode the agent’s tendency for stress habituation and incorporate them in the agent’s (...) decision-making process. Using differently shaped goal priors—that encode the agent’s goal preferences—we illustrate, in two examples, the optimising behaviour of agents. We show that habituation minimises free energy by reducing the precision of goal preferences. Reducing the precision of goal priors means that the agent accepts adverse states. Acceptance or tolerance of adverse outcomes may explain why habituation causes people to exhibit an attenuation of the stress response. Given that stress habituation occurs in brain regions where goal priors are encoded, i.e., in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and that these priors are encoded as sufficient statistics of probability distributions, our approach seems plausible from an anatomical-functional and neuro-statistical point of view. The ensuing formal and generalisable account—based on the free energy principle—further motivate our novel treatment of stress habituation. Our analysis suggests that stress habituation has far-reaching consequences, protecting against the harmful effects of toxic stress, but on the other hand making the acceptability of precarious living conditions and the development of the obese type 2 diabetes mellitus phenotype more likely. (shrink)

Recently, a number of philosophers and psychologists have drawn on neuroscientific and psychological research on the role of affective processes in moral thinking to provide support for moral sentimentalism. Philip Gerrans and Jeanette Kennett criticize such ‘neurosentimentalist’ accounts on the grounds that they focus only on synchronic processes occurring at the time of moral judgement. As a result, these accounts face a dilemma: either they fail to accommodate the connection between moral judgement and agency or they are committed to implausible (...) claims about the moral agency of individuals with damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex. I respond to this criticism, arguing that Gerrans and Kennett fail to appreciate the diachronic aspects of affective mechanisms and that they misinterpret the empirical literature on the vmPFC. I argue that neurosentimentalism does have the resources to explain the connection between moral judgement and agency. (shrink)

Moral dilemmas have long been debated in moral philosophy without reaching a definitive consensus. The majority of value pluralists attribute their origin to the incommensurability of moral values, i.e. the statement that, since moral values are many and different in nature, they may conflict and cannot be compared. Neuroscientific studies on the neural common currency show that the comparison between allegedly incompatible alternatives is a practical possibility, namely it is the basis of the way in which the agent evaluates choice (...) options. Indeed, both in economic and moral decision-making, the value of options is represented and directly compared in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex. Therefore, we contend that moral dilemmas do not originate from value incommensurability and, on the basis of the neuroscientific discoveries on the neural currency, we derive the implications for the philosophical debate on moral dilemmas. We also provide a possible connection between the experience of moral dilemmas and their neural representation: one of the causes of the individual’s indecision is the neural tie, i.e. the condition in which two options have the same value at neural level, and her regret could be due to the motivational force of the rejected option that is still signalled by affective processes in the brain. We apply this interpretation and the common currency hypothesis to vocational decisions and propose that, although from the agent’s perspective the options are qualitatively different, they may be nevertheless equivalent at neural level. This can be seen as a reason for downgrading the importance commonly attributed to the risk of making the “wrong choice”. (shrink)

Psychopathy is a developmental disorder associated with specific forms of emotional dysfunction and an increased risk for both frustration-based reactive aggression and goal-directed instrumental antisocial behavior. While the full behavioral manifestation of the disorder is under considerable social influence, the basis of this disorder appears to be genetic. At the neural level, individuals with psychopathy show atypical responding within the amygdala and ventromedial prefrontal cortex. Moreover, the roles of the amygdala in stimulus-reinforcement learning and responding to emotional (...) expressions and vmPFC in the representation of reinforcement expectancies are compromised. The implications of these functional impairments for responsibility are discussed. (shrink)

The prefrontal cortex has long been suspected to play an important role in cognitive control, in the ability to orchestrate thought and action in accordance with internal goals. Its neural basis, however, has remained a mystery. Here, we propose that cognitive control stems from the active maintenance of patterns of activity in the prefrontal cortex that represent goals and the means to achieve them. They provide bias signals to other brain structures whose net effect is to (...) guide the flow of activity along neural pathways that establish the proper mappings between inputs, internal states, and outputs needed to perform a given task. We review neurophysiological, neurobiological, neuroimaging, and computational studies that support this theory and discuss its implications as well as further issues to be addressed. (shrink)

IntroductionThe prefrontal cortex plays a crucial role in cognition, particularly in executive functions. Cortical reactivity measured with Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation combined with Electroencephalography is altered in pathological conditions, and it may also be a marker of cognitive status in middle-aged adults. In this study, we investigated the associations between cognitive measures and TMS evoked EEG reactivity and explored whether the effects of this relationship were related to neurofilament light chain levels, a marker of neuroaxonal damage.MethodsFifty two healthy middle-aged (...) adults from the Barcelona Brain Health Initiative cohort underwent TMS-EEG, a comprehensive neuropsychological assessment, and a blood test for NfL levels. Global and Local Mean-Field Power, two measures of cortical reactivity, were quantified after left prefrontal cortex stimulation, and cognition was set as the outcome of the regression analysis. The left inferior parietal lobe was used as a control stimulation condition.ResultsLocal reactivity was significantly associated with working memory and reasoning only after L-PFC stimulation. No associations were found between NfL and cognition. These specific associations were independent of the status of neuroaxonal damage indexed by the NfL biomarker and remained after adjusting for age, biological sex, and education.ConclusionOur results demonstrate that TMS evoked EEG reactivity at the L-PFC, but not the L-IPL, is related to the cognitive status of middle-aged individuals and independent of NfL levels, and may become a valuable biomarker of frontal lobe-associated cognitive function. (shrink)

Self-harm is a potentially lethal symptom of borderline personality disorder (BPD) that often improves with dialectical behavior therapy (DBT). While DBT is effective for reducing self-harm in many patients with BPD, a small but significant number of patients either does not improve in treatment or ends treatment prematurely. Accordingly, it is crucial to identify factors that may prospectively predict which patients are most likely to benefit from and remain in treatment. In the present preliminary study, twenty-nine actively self-harming patients with (...) BPD completed brain-imaging procedures probing activation of the prefrontal cortex during impulse control prior to beginning DBT and after seven months of treatment. Patients that reduced their frequency of self-harm the most over treatment displayed lower levels of neural activation in the bilateral dorsolateral prefrontal cortex prior to beginning treatment, and they showed the greatest increases in activity within this region after seven months of treatment. Prior to starting DBT, treatment non-completers demonstrated greater activation than treatment-completers in the medial prefrontal cortex and right inferior frontal gyrus. Reductions in self-harm over the treatment period were associated with increases in activity in right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex even after accounting for improvements in depression, mania, and BPD symptom severity. These findings suggest that pre-treatment patterns of activation in the prefrontal cortex underlying impulse control may be prospectively associated with improvements in self-harm and treatment attrition for patients with BPD treated with DBT. (shrink)

The role of the prefrontal cortex is one of the most topical and important areas of research in contemporary neuropsychology. This cortical region appears to be linked with executive processes affecting many diverse areas of cognitive function. Working memory, information processing, behavioural organization, attention, judgement, and the ability to cope with novel experiences are just some of the diverse processes it affects. This book brings together contributions from some of the world's leading researchers on the prefrontal (...) class='Hi'>cortex. They discuss the many recent theoretical and technical advances in the field - for example in our understanding of the neural architecture of the prefrontal cortex, in the development of comparable texts of cognition in humans and other primates, in our understanding of the relationships between neuronal activity and behaviour, and in the increasing use of functional neuroimaging to identify different levels of organization within the prefrontal cortex. These important developments make this an ideal time to address the many questions and debates that have arisen about the role and functional organization of this area of the brain. One of the first books to be written on the subject, The Prefrontal Cortex is a state-of-the-art account of our knowledge of this exciting subject. It will be welcomed by all researchers and students in neuro- and cognitive psychology, and neuroscience. (shrink)

A prefrontal control system that is less mature than the limbic reward system in adolescence is thought to impede self-regulatory abilities, which could contribute to poor dietary choices and obesity. We, therefore, aimed to examine whether structural morphology of the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala are associated with dietary decisions and obesity in children and adolescents. Seventy-one individuals between the ages of 8–22 years participated in this study; each participant completed a computer-based food choice task and a (...) T1- and T2-weighted structural brain scans. Two indices of obesity were assessed, including age- and sex-specific body mass index and waist-to-height ratio. The behavioral task included rating 60 food stimuli for tastiness, healthiness, and liking. Based on each participant’s self-ratings, 100 binary food choices were then made utilizing a computer mouse. Dietary “self-control” was calculated as the proportion of trials where the individual chose the healthier food item over the total number of trials. Cortical thickness and amygdala subnuclei volumes were quantified using FreeSurfer 6.0 and CIT168 atlas, respectively. We found that WHtR was negatively associated with the thickness of bilateral superior frontal, left superior temporal, right insula, and right inferior temporal regions. We also found WHtR to be positively associated with the volume of the central nucleus region of the amygdala, after adjusting for the hemisphere, age, sex, and intracranial volumes. A similar data pattern was observed when BMIz was used. Moreover, we found that across all participants, thinner right superior frontal cortex and larger left CEN volumes predicted lower dietary self-control. These results suggest that differential development of the PFC and amygdala relate to obesity and dietary self-control. Further longitudinal studies are merited to determine causal relationships among altered PFC to amygdala neural circuitry, dietary self-control, and obesity. (shrink)

Whether the prefrontal cortex is part of the neural substrates of consciousness is currently debated. Against prefrontal theories of consciousness, many have argued that neural activity in the prefrontal cortex does not correlate with consciousness but with subjective reports. We defend prefrontal theories of consciousness against this argument. We surmise that the requirement for reports is not a satisfying explanation of the difference in neural activity between conscious and unconscious trials, and that prefrontal (...) theories of consciousness come out of this debate unscathed. (shrink)

Is perceptual processing in dedicated sensory areas sufficient for conscious perception? Localists say ‘Yes—given some background conditions.’ Prefrontalists say ‘No: conscious perceptual experience requires the involvement of prefrontal structures.’ I review the evidence for prefrontalism. I start by presenting correlational evidence. In doing so, I answer the ‘report argument’, according to which the apparent involvement of the prefrontal cortex in consciousness stems from the requirement for reports. I then review causal evidence for prefrontalism and answer the ‘lesion (...) argument’, which purports to show that prefrontalism is wrong because lesions to the prefrontal cortex do not abolish consciousness. I conclude that multiple sources of evidence converge toward the view that the prefrontal cortex plays a significant role in consciousness. (shrink)

A central debate in philosophy and neuroscience pertains to whether PFC activity plays an essential role in the neural basis of consciousness. Neuroimaging and electrophysiology studies have revealed that the contents of conscious perceptual experience can be successfully decoded from PFC activity, but these findings might be confounded by post- perceptual cognitive processes, such as thinking, reasoning, and decision-making, that are not necessary for con- sciousness. To clarify the involvement of the PFC in consciousness, we present a synthesis of research (...) that has used intracranial electrical stimulation (iES) for the causal modulation of neural activity in the human PFC. This research provides compelling evidence that iES of only certain prefrontal regions (i.e., orbitofrontal cortex and anterior cingu- late cortex) reliably perturbs conscious experience. Conversely, stimulation of anterolateral prefrontal sites, often con- sidered crucial in higher-order and global workspace theories of consciousness, seldom elicits any reportable alterations in consciousness. Furthermore, the wide variety of iES-elicited effects in the PFC (e.g., emotions, thoughts, and olfactory and visual hallucinations) exhibits no clear relation to the immediate environment. Therefore, there is no evidence for the kinds of alterations in ongoing perceptual experience that would be predicted by higher-order or global workspace theories. Nevertheless, effects in the orbitofrontal and anterior cingulate cortices suggest a specific role for these PFC subregions in supporting emotional aspects of conscious experience. Overall, this evidence presents a challenge for higher-order and global workspace theories, which commonly point to the PFC as the basis for con- scious perception based on correlative and possibly confounded information. (shrink)