Neural bases of moral, ethical, and political decision-making

The cognitive and neural origins of human systems of value and belief have long been of interest in psychology and philosophy given their importance for guiding social behavior. How does the brain represent and determine what is “right”? What are the neural foundations of moral, ethical, and political belief? To what extent is variability in the type of beliefs endorsed represented by variability in the underlying neural systems? How is the functional connectivity of these networks modified in the context of evidence that either confirms or disconfirms one’s prior beliefs? Our current work investigates these questions (employing fMRI, lesion, and neuropsychological patient studies) in an effort to advance our understanding of the remarkable neural architecture from which uniquely human systems of value and belief emerge.

References

Barbey, A.K. & Grafman, J. (in press). An integrative cognitive neuroscience theory for social reasoning and moral judgment. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science. [pdf]

Kapogiannis, D., Barbey, A.K., Su, M., Wassermann, E.M. & Grafman, J. (2009). Neuroanatomical variability of religiosity. PLoS ONE, 4, e7180. [pdf]

Kapogiannis, D., Barbey, A.K., Su, M., Zamboni, G., Krueger, F. & Grafman, J. (2009). Cognitive and neural foundations of religious belief. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, 106, 4876-4881. [pdf]

Barsalou, L.W., Barbey, A.K., Simmons, W.K. & Santos, A. (2005). Embodiment in religious knowledge. Journal of Cognition and Culture, 5, 14-57. [pdf]

Cornwell, B., Barbey, A.K. & Simmons, W.K. (2004). The embodied bases of supernatural concepts. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 27, 735-736. [pdf]