Disruption Of Temporoparietal Junction Affects Moral Judgements

In my chapter INSIDE THE BRAIN I mention the work of Rebecca Saxe and her belief that an area of the brain known as the temporoparietal junction was extremely important in the capacity to infer mental states - beliefs, desires etc. - in other people and thus tremendously important to our ability to form moral judgements that depend on our assessment of others' mental states. In this paper, together with Marc Hauser and others, she reports that, when the TPJ was disrupted using transcranial magnetic stimulation, subjects were much less able to make moral distinctions between intentional versus accidental harm. They judged attempted harms as less morally forbidden and more morally permissable than control individuals.