EM field, behind right ear, suspends morality
EM field, behind right ear, suspends morality
2010 March 29
by Mark Baard
This new finding, from MIT, should cause scientists to more closely examine the risks to human health posed by mobile phones and other wireless, personal technologies. — M.B.
MIT neuroscientists believe they have isolated the brain region — just behind the right ear — where moral judgements take place.
And they can suspend someone’s ability to judge right from wrong, simply by generating a magnetic field near the same spot where many of us hold our cellular phones and wireless, Bluetooth, headsets.
The researchers’ findings, announced today:
“In both experiments, the researchers found that when the right TPJ (right temporo-parietal junction) was disrupted, subjects were more likely to judge failed attempts to harm as morally permissible.”
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http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-03/miot-mjc032510.php
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29-Mar-2010
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Moral judgments can be altered
MIT neuroscientists influence people’s moral judgments by disrupting specific brain region
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — MIT neuroscientists have shown they can influence people’s moral judgments by disrupting a specific brain region — a finding that helps reveal how the brain constructs morality.
To make moral judgments about other people, we often need to infer their intentions — an ability known as “theory of mind.” For example, if a hunter shoots his friend while on a hunting trip, we need to know what the hunter was thinking: Was he secretly jealous, or did he mistake his friend for a duck?
Previous studies have shown that a brain region known as the right temporo-parietal junction (TPJ) is highly active when we think about other people’s intentions, thoughts and beliefs. In the new study, the researchers disrupted activity in the right TPJ by inducing a current in the brain using a magnetic field applied to the scalp. They found that the subjects’ ability to make moral judgments that require an understanding of other people’s intentions — for example, a failed murder attempt — was impaired.
The researchers, led by Rebecca Saxe, MIT assistant professor of brain and cognitive sciences, report their findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the week of March 29.
The study offers “striking evidence” that the right TPJ, located at the brain’s surface above and behind the right ear, is critical for making moral judgments, says Liane Young, lead author of the paper. It’s also startling, since under normal circumstances people are very confident and consistent in these kinds of moral judgments, says Young, a postdoctoral associate in MIT’s Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences.
“You think of morality as being a really high-level behavior,” she says. “To be able to apply (a magnetic field) to a specific brain region and change people’s moral judgments is really astonishing.”
How they did it: The researchers used a non-invasive technique known as transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to selectively interfere with brain activity in the right TPJ. A magnetic field applied to a small area of the skull creates weak electric currents that impede nearby brain cells’ ability to fire normally, but the effect is only temporary.
In one experiment, volunteers were exposed to TMS for 25 minutes before taking a test in which they read a series of scenarios and made moral judgments of characters’ actions on a scale of 1 (absolutely forbidden) to 7 (absolutely permissible).
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It’s scary some of the little things that people are coming up with.
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