TY - JOUR
T1 - Early detection of intentional harm in the human amygdala
AU - Hesse, Eugenia
AU - Mikulan, Ezequiel
AU - Decety, Jean
AU - Sigman, Mariano
AU - Del Carmen Garcia, María
AU - Silva, Walter
AU - Ciraolo, Carlos
AU - Vaucheret, Esteban
AU - Baglivo, Fabricio
AU - Huepe, David
AU - Lopez, Vladimir
AU - Manes, Facundo
AU - Bekinschtein, Tristan A.
AU - Ibanez, Agustin
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© The Author (2015).
PY - 2016/1/1
Y1 - 2016/1/1
N2 - A decisive element of moral cognition is the detection of harm and its assessment as intentional or unintentional. Moral cognition engages brain networks supporting mentalizing, intentionality, empathic concern and evaluation. These networks rely on the amygdala as a critical hub, likely through frontotemporal connections indexing stimulus salience. We assessed inferences about perceived harm using a paradigm validated through functional magnetic resonance imaging, eye-tracking and electroencephalogram recordings. During the task, we measured local field potentials in three patients with depth electrodes (n = 115) placed in the amygdala and in several frontal, temporal, and parietal locations. Direct electrophysiological recordings demonstrate that intentional harm induces early activity in the amygdala (5 200 ms), which-in turn-predicts intention attribution. The amygdala was the only site that systematically discriminated between critical conditions and predicted their classification of events as intentional. Moreover, connectivity analysis showed that intentional harm induced stronger frontotemporal information sharing at early stages. Results support the 'many roads' view of the amygdala and highlight its role in the rapid encoding of intention and salience-critical components of mentalizing and moral evaluation.
AB - A decisive element of moral cognition is the detection of harm and its assessment as intentional or unintentional. Moral cognition engages brain networks supporting mentalizing, intentionality, empathic concern and evaluation. These networks rely on the amygdala as a critical hub, likely through frontotemporal connections indexing stimulus salience. We assessed inferences about perceived harm using a paradigm validated through functional magnetic resonance imaging, eye-tracking and electroencephalogram recordings. During the task, we measured local field potentials in three patients with depth electrodes (n = 115) placed in the amygdala and in several frontal, temporal, and parietal locations. Direct electrophysiological recordings demonstrate that intentional harm induces early activity in the amygdala (5 200 ms), which-in turn-predicts intention attribution. The amygdala was the only site that systematically discriminated between critical conditions and predicted their classification of events as intentional. Moreover, connectivity analysis showed that intentional harm induced stronger frontotemporal information sharing at early stages. Results support the 'many roads' view of the amygdala and highlight its role in the rapid encoding of intention and salience-critical components of mentalizing and moral evaluation.
KW - Amygdala
KW - Intentional harm
KW - Intracranial recordings
KW - Moral cognition
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84964578154&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1093/brain/awv336
DO - 10.1093/brain/awv336
M3 - Article
C2 - 26608745
AN - SCOPUS:84964578154
SN - 0006-8950
VL - 139
SP - 54
EP - 61
JO - Brain
JF - Brain
IS - 1
ER -