Regional and Temporal Differences in Brain Activity With Morally Good or Bad Judgments in Men: A Magnetoencephalography Study

Abstract

Many neuroimaging studies on morality focus on functional brain areas that relate to moral judgment specifically in morally negative situations. To date, there have been few studies on differences in brain activity under conditions of being morally good and bad along a continuum. To explore not only the brain regions involved but also their functional connections during moral judgments, we used magnetoencephalography (MEG), which is superior to other imaging modalities for analyzing time-dependent brain activities; only men were recruited because sex differences might be a confounding factor. While analyses showed that general patterns of brain activation and connectivity were similar between morally good judgments (MGJs) and morally bad judgments (MBJs), activation in brain areas that subserve emotion and "theory of mind" on the right hemisphere was larger in MGJ than MBJ conditions. In the left local temporal region, the connectivity between brain areas related to emotion and reward/punishment was stronger in MBJ than MGJ conditions. The time-frequency analysis showed distinct laterality (left hemisphere dominant) occurring during early moral information processing in MBJ conditions compared to MGJ conditions and phase-dependent differences in the appearance of theta waves between MBJ and MGJ conditions. During MBJs, connections within the hemispheric regions were more robust than those between hemispheric regions. These results suggested that the local temporal region on the left hemisphere is more important in the execution of MBJs during early moral valence processing than in that with MGJs. Shorter neuronal connections within the hemisphere may allow to make MBJs punctual.

Keywords: MEG; brain activity; connectivity; moral judgment; morally bad judgment; morally good judgment.