Neural evidence for "intuitive prosecution": the use of mental state information for negative moral verdicts.

Moral judgment depends critically on theory of mind (ToM), reasoning about mental states such as beliefs and intentions. People assign blame for failed attempts to harm and offer forgiveness in the case of accidents. Here we use fMRI to investigate the role of ToM in moral judgment of harmful vs. helpful actions. Is ToM deployed differently for judgments of blame vs. praise? Participants evaluated agents who produced a harmful, helpful, or neutral outcome, based on a harmful, helpful, or neutral intention; participants made blame and praise judgments. In the right temporo-parietal junction (right TPJ), and, to a lesser extent, the left TPJ and medial prefrontal cortex, the neural response reflected an interaction between belief and outcome factors, for both blame and praise judgments: The response in these regions was highest when participants delivered a negative moral judgment, i.e., assigned blame or withheld praise, based solely on the agent's intent (attempted harm, accidental help). These results show enhanced attention to mental states for negative moral verdicts based exclusively on mental state information.

Brain regions for perceiving and reasoning about other people in school-aged children.

Neuroimaging studies with adults have identified cortical regions recruited when people think about other people's thoughts (theory of mind): temporo-parietal junction, posterior cingulate, and medial prefrontal cortex. These same regions were recruited in 13 children aged 6-11 years when they listened to sections of a story describing a character's thoughts compared to sections of the same story that described the physical context. A distinct region in the posterior superior temporal sulcus was implicated in the perception of biological motion. Change in response selectivity with age was observed in just one region. The right temporo-parietal junction was recruited equally for mental and physical facts about people in younger children, but only for mental facts in older children.

Distinct regions of right temporo-parietal junction are selective for theory of mind and exogenous attention.

In functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies, a cortical region in the right temporo-parietal junction (RTPJ) is recruited when participants read stories about people's thoughts ('Theory of Mind'). Both fMRI and lesion studies suggest that a region near the RTPJ is associated with attentional reorienting in response to an unexpected stimulus. Do Theory of Mind and attentional reorienting recruit a single population of neurons, or are there two neighboring but distinct neural populations in the RTPJ? One recent study compared these activations, and found evidence consistent with a single common region. However, the apparent overlap may have been due to the low resolution of the previous technique. We tested this hypothesis using a high-resolution protocol, within-subjects analyses, and more powerful statistical methods. Strict conjunction analyses revealed that the area of overlap was small and on the periphery of each activation. In addition, a bootstrap analysis identified a reliable 6-10 mm spatial displacement between the peak activations of the two tasks; the same magnitude and direction of displacement was observed in within-subjects comparisons. In all, these results suggest that there are neighboring but distinct regions within the RTPJ implicated in Theory of Mind and orienting attention.

The influence of prior record on moral judgment.

Repeat offenders are commonly given more severe sentences than first-time offenders for the same violations. Though this practice makes intuitive sense, the theory behind escalating penalties is disputed in both legal and economic theories. Here we investigate folk intuitions concerning the moral and intentional status of actions performed by people with positive versus negative prior records. We hypothesized that prior record would modulate both moral judgment and mental state reasoning. Subjects first engaged in an economic game with fair (positive prior record) and unfair (negative prior record) competitors and then read descriptions of their competitors' actions that resulted in either positive or negative outcomes. The descriptions left the competitors' mental states unstated. We found that subjects judged actions producing negative outcomes as more "intentional" and more "blameworthy" when performed by unfair competitors. Although explicit mental state evaluation was not required, moral judgments in this case were accompanied by increased activation in brain regions associated with mental state reasoning, including predominantly the right temporo-parietal junction (RTPJ). The magnitude of RTPJ activation was correlated with individual subjects' behavioural responses to unfair play in the game. These results thus provide insight for both legal theory and moral psychology.

Overlapping and non-overlapping brain regions for theory of mind and self reflection in individual subjects.

When subjects are required to reason about someone's false belief, a consistent pattern of brain regions are recruited including the medial prefrontal cortex, medial precuneus and bilateral temporo-parietal junction. Previous group analyses suggest that the two medial regions, but not the lateral regions, are also recruited when subjects engage in self-reflection. The current study directly compared the results of the 'false belief' and 'self' tasks in individual subjects. Consistent with previous reports, the medial prefrontal and medial precuneus regions recruited by the two tasks significantly overlap in individual subjects, although there was also evidence for non-overlapping voxels in medial regions. The temporo-parietal regions are only recruited for the 'theory of mind' task. Six possible models of the relationship between theory of mind, self-reflection and autobiographical memory, all consistent with both neurobiological and developmental evidence to date, are discussed.