Early detection of intentional harm in the human amygdala

JEAN DECETY; HESSE, EUGENIA; WALTER SILVA; MARIANO SIGMAN; FABRICIO BAGLIVO; CARLOS CIRAOLO; FACUNDO MANES; DAVID HUEPE; TRISTAN BEKINSCHTEIN; EZEQUIEL MIKULAN; MARÍA DEL CARMEN GARCIA; ESTEBAN VAUCHERET; VLADIMIR LOPEZ; AGUSTIN IBANEZ

BRAIN

OXFORD UNIV PRESS

Lugar: Oxford; Año: 2016 vol. 139 p. 54 - 61

0006-8950

A decisive element of moral cognition is the detection of harm and its assessment as intentional or unintentional. Moral cognitionengages brain networks supporting mentalizing, intentionality, empathic concern and evaluation. These networks rely on the amygdalaas a critical hub, likely through frontotemporal connections indexing stimulus salience. We assessed inferences about perceived harmusing a paradigm validated through functional magnetic resonance imaging, eye-tracking and electroencephalogram recordings. Duringthe task, we measured local field potentials in three patients with depth electrodes (n = 115) placed in the amygdala and in severalfrontal, temporal, and parietal locations. Direct electrophysiological recordings demonstrate that intentional harm induces early activity inthe amygdala (5200 ms), which?in turn?predicts intention attribution. The amygdala was the only site that systematically discriminatedbetween critical conditions and predicted their classification of events as intentional. Moreover, connectivity analysis showed thatintentional harm induced stronger frontotemporal information sharing at early stages. Results support the ?many roads? view of theamygdala and highlight its role in the rapid encoding of intention and salience?critical components of mentalizing and moral evaluation.