Soft on crime: Patients with ventromedial prefrontal cortex damage allocate reduced third-party punishment to violent criminals.

The human impulse to punish those who have unjustly harmed others (i.e., third-party punishment) is critical for stable, cooperative societies. Punishment selection is influenced by both harm outcome and the intent of the moral agent (i.e., the offender's knowledge of wrongdoing and desire that the prohibited consequence occur). We allocate severe punishments to those who commit violent crimes and milder punishments to those who commit non-violent crimes; and we allocate severe punishments to criminals who have malicious intent and milder punishments to criminals who lack malicious intent. Prior research has indicated that aversive, emotional responses of third-party judges may influence punishment allocation, as increased negative emotion correlates with more punitive punishments. Here, we show that patients with damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC; a region necessary for the normal generation of emotion), compared to other neurological patients and healthy adult participants, allocate more lenient third-party punishment to criminals who commit emotionally-evocative, violent crimes. By contrast, patients with vmPFC damage did not differ from comparison participants on punishment allocation for non-emotional, non-violent crimes. These results demonstrate the necessity of the vmPFC for the integration of emotion into third-party punishment decisions, and indicate that negative emotion influences third-party punishment allocation particularly for scenarios involving physical harm to another.

Longitudinal evaluation of ventricular volume changes associated with mild traumatic brain injury in military service members.

PRIMARY OBJECTIVE: To investigate differences in longitudinal trajectories of ventricle-brain ratio (VBR), a general measure of brain atrophy, between Veterans with and without history of mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI). RESEARCH DESIGN: Structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) was used to calculate VBR in 70 Veterans with a history of mTBI and 34 Veterans without such history at two time points approximately 3 and 8 years after a combat deployment. MAIN OUTCOMES AND RESULTS: Both groups demonstrated a quadratic relationship between VBR and age that is consistent with normal developmental trajectories. Veterans with history of mTBI had larger total brain volume, but no interaction between mTBI and age was observed for brain volume, ventricular volume, or VBR. CONCLUSIONS: In our longitudinal sample of deployed Veterans, mTBI was not associated with gross brain atrophy as reflected by abnormally high VBR or abnormal increases in VBR over time.