Decoding moral judgments from neural representations of intentions

被引:134
作者
Koster-Hale, Jorie [1 ,2 ]
Saxe, Rebecca [1 ,2 ]
Dungan, James [3 ]
Young, Liane L. [3 ]
机构
[1] MIT, McGovern Inst Brain Res, Cambridge, MA 02139 USA
[2] MIT, Dept Brain & Cognit Sci, Cambridge, MA 02139 USA
[3] Boston Coll, Dept Psychol, Chestnut Hill, MA 02467 USA
基金
美国国家卫生研究院; 美国国家科学基金会;
关键词
functional MRI; morality; theory of mind; TEMPORO-PARIETAL JUNCTION; VOXEL PATTERN-ANALYSIS; LANGUAGE COMPREHENSION; SOCIAL COGNITION; AUTISM; FMRI; MIND; SPECTRUM; BRAIN; CHILDREN;
D O I
10.1073/pnas.1207992110
中图分类号
O [数理科学和化学]; P [天文学、地球科学]; Q [生物科学]; N [自然科学总论];
学科分类号
07 ; 0710 ; 09 ;
摘要
Intentional harms are typically judged to be morally worse than accidental harms. Distinguishing between intentional harms and accidents depends on the capacity for mental state reasoning (i.e., reasoning about beliefs and intentions), which is supported by a group of brain regions including the right temporo-parietal junction (RTPJ). Prior research has found that interfering with activity in RTPJ can impair mental state reasoning for moral judgment and that high-functioning individuals with autism spectrum disorders make moral judgments based less on intent information than neurotypical participants. Three experiments, using multivoxel pattern analysis, find that (i) in neurotypical adults, the RTPJ shows reliable and distinct spatial patterns of responses across voxels for intentional vs. accidental harms, and (ii) individual differences in this neural pattern predict differences in participants' moral judgments. These effects are specific to RTPJ. By contrast, (iii) this distinction was absent in adults with autism spectrum disorders. We conclude that multivoxel pattern analysis can detect features of mental state representations (e. g., intent), and that the corresponding neural patterns are behaviorally and clinically relevant.
引用
收藏
页码:5648 / 5653
页数:6
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