Early detection of intentional harm in the human amygdala

EUGENIA HESSE; EZEQUIEL MIKULAN; JEAN DECETY; FACUNDO MANES; TRISTAN A. BEKINSCHTEIN; AGUSTÍN IBÁÑEZ

Congreso; Society for Social Neuroscience(S4SN) Annual Meeting; 2015

A decisive element of moral cognition is the detection of harm and its assessment as intentional or unintentional. Moral evaluation engages brain networks supporting mentalizing, intentionality, empathic concern and evaluation. This network relies 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 fMRI, eye- tracking and EEG 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 (