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Is There A Neuroscientific Basis To Altruism?

Is There A Neuroscientific Basis To Altruism? published on

Evidence that certain brain-regions are strongly linked to altruistic behavior.

In this study, published in Social Neuroscience, Moore et al. use “continuous Theta Bust Stimulation (cTBS)” on a total of 58 subjects (30 female, 28 male), to temporarily disable, or at least dampen the activity in two parts of the prefrontal cortex, which had been linked to altruistic behavior in a previous study. To test the link, the participants were placed in an unsupervised Dictator Game, where they had to allocate money between themselves and players of high or low economic standing. Both tested areas of the prefrontal cortex resulted in an increase in generosity in general, but increasing generosity towards players with low and with high economic standing differentially–strongly suggesting that the cTBS-disabled areas of the brain exert an inhibitory influence on altruistic behavior in general and in more nuanced ways.

Original Source:
Christov-Moore, Leonardo, Taisei Sugiyama, Kristina Grigaityte, and Marco Iacoboni. Increasing generosity by disrupting prefrontal cortex. Social Neuroscience, just-accepted, 2016.
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17470919.2016.1154105
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/17470919.2016.1154105