Activation Of Brain Region Predicts Altruism & Empathy

Duke University Medical Center researchers have discovered that activation of a particular brain region predicts whether people tend to be selfish or altruistic
Although understanding the function of this brain region may not necessarily identify what drives people like Mother Theresa, it may give clues to the origins of important social behaviors like altruism," said study investigator Scott A. Huettel, Ph.D., a neuroscientist at the Brain Imaging and Analysis Center.

Results of the study ,in the online edition of Nature Neuroscience and will be published in the print issue of the journal. The work was funded by the National Institutes of Health.

Altruism describes the tendency of people to act in ways that put the welfare of others ahead of their own. Why some people choose to act altruistically is unclear, says lead study investigator Dharol Tankersley, a graduate student in Huettel's laboratory.

In the study, researchers scanned the brains of 45 people while they either played a computer game or watched the computer play the game on its own. In both cases, successful playing of the game earned money for a charity of the study participant's choice.

The researchers scanned the participants' brains using a technique called functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which uses harmless magnetic pulses to measure changes in oxygen levels that indicate nerve cell activity.

The scans revealed that a region of the brain called the posterior superior temporal sulcus was activated to a greater degree when people perceived an action -- that is, when they watched the computer play the game -- than when they acted themselves, Tankersley said. This region, which lies in the top and back portion of the brain, is generally activated when the mind is trying to figure out social relationships.

The researchers then characterized the participants as more or less altruistic, based on their responses to questions about how often they engaged in different helping behaviors, and compared the participants' brain scans with their estimated level of altruistic behavior.

The fMRI scans showed that increased activity in the posterior superior temporal sulcus strongly predicted a person's likelihood for altruistic behavior.

According to the researchers, the results suggest that altruistic behavior may originate from how people view the world rather than how they act in it.

"We believe that the ability to perceive other people's actions as meaningful is critical for altruism," Tankersley said.

The scientists suggest that studying the brain systems that allow people to see the world as a series of meaningful interactions may ultimately help further understanding of disorders, such as autism or antisocial behavior, that are characterized by deficits in interpersonal interactions.

The researchers are now exploring ways to study the development of this brain region early in life, Tankersley said, adding that such information may help determine how the tendencies toward altruism are established.

C. Jill Stowe, a decision scientist in Duke's Fuqua School of Business, also participated in the research.

Displays of altruism or selflessness towards others can be sexually attractive in a mate. This is one of the findings of a study carried out by biologists and a psychologist at The University of Nottingham.n three studies of more than 1,000 people, Dr Tim Phillips and his fellow researchers discovered that women place significantly greater importance on altruistic traits than anything else. Their findings have been published in the British Journal of Psychology.

Dr Phillips said: “Evolutionary theory predicts competition between individuals and yet we see many examples in nature of individuals disadvantaging themselves to help others. In humans, particularly, we see individuals prepared to put themselves at considerable risk to help individuals they do not know for no obvious reward.”

Participants in the studies were questioned about a range of qualities they look for in a mate, including examples of altruistic behaviour such as ‘donates blood regularly’ and ‘volunteered to help out in a local hospital’. Women placed significantly greater importance on altruistic traits in all three studies.

Yet both sexes may consider altruistic traits when choosing a partner. One hundred and seventy couples were asked to rate how much they preferred altruistic traits in a mate and report their own level of altruistic behaviour. The strength of preference in one partner was found to correlate with the extent of altruistic behaviour typically displayed in the other, suggesting that altruistic traits may well be a factor both men and women take into account when choosing a partner.

Dr Phillips said: “For many years the standard explanation for altruistic behaviour towards non-relatives has been based on reciprocity and reputation — a version of ‘you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours’. I believe we need to look elsewhere to understand the roots of human altruism. The expansion of the human brain would have greatly increased the cost of raising children so it would have been important for our ancestors to choose mates both willing and able to be good, long-term parents. Displays of altruism could well have provided accurate clues to this and genes linked to altruism would have been favoured as a result.”

Dr Phillips concluded: “Sexual selection could well come to be seen as exerting a major influence on what made humans human.”

Dr Tom Reader in the School of Biology said: “Sexual preferences have enormous potential to shape the evolution of animal behaviour. Humans are clearly not an exception: sex may have a crucial role in explaining what are our most biologically interesting and unusual habits.”

Inner Workings Of The Magnanimous Mind: Why It Feels Good To Be Altruistic

It’s an enduring mystery that taunts neuroscientists and evolutionary biologists. If the human brain evolved to maximize its owner’s survival, why are we motivated to help others, even when it incurs some personal cost?

One pat answer is that when we help someone in need, we expect him to return the favor. But some kinds of altruism aren’t easy to explain away as mere reciprocity. For example, tax incentives aside, donating money to a charitable cause is unlikely to bring the donor any foreseeable return – except perhaps the "joy of giving."

Two new studies shed light on why it feels good to give by examining how and where altruism originates in the brain.

In both studies, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to visualize the brain's activity while people played computer games that enabled them to earn money for real-life charities. The researchers also tied the results of these imaging experiments to the subjects’ everyday behaviors, by asking them about their involvement in charitable work, or about their general capacity for altruism. Both studies conclude that areas of the cerebral cortex – the outer layer of the brain that serves highly evolved cognitive functions, such as abstract thought and self-awareness – are key mediators of altruistic behavior.

One study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,* involved about 20 people, each of whom had the potential to walk away with a pot of $128. They also were given a separate pool of funds, which they could choose to distribute to a variety of charities linked to controversial issues, such as abortion and the death penalty. A computer presented each charity to the subjects in series, and gave them the option to donate, to oppose donation, or to receive a payoff, adding money to the pot. Sometimes, the decision to donate or oppose was costly, calling for subjects to take money out of the pot.

It turned out that a similar pattern of brain activity was seen when subjects chose either to donate or take a payoff. Both types of decisions were associated with heightened activity in parts of the midbrain, a region deep in the brain that is known to be involved in primal desires (such as food and sex) and the satisfaction of them. This result provides the first evidence that the "joy of giving" has an anatomical basis in the brain – surprisingly, one that is shared with selfish longings and rewards.

Jordan Grafman, Ph.D., the scientist who led the work, was more interested by what happened when subjects donated, or opposed donation, at a cost to themselves. In either case, an area of the brain toward the forehead, known as the anterior prefrontal cortex, lit up. When Dr. Grafman and his team asked subjects to rate their charitable involvement in everyday life, he found that those with the highest ratings also had the highest level of activity in the prefrontal cortex.

"There’s a lot of controversy about what the prefrontal cortex does," said Dr. Grafman, a senior investigator in the intramural research division of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS). "We’re interested in how this uniquely human part of the brain represents and processes information."

Studying how the prefrontal cortex influences altruistic behavior is likely to yield insights into other kinds of complex decision-making "where the end-result is not going to be immediately apparent," he said.

Meanwhile, a study in Nature Neuroscience** connects altruism to the posterior superior temporal cortex (pSTC), an area in the upper rear of the brain that’s known to enable us to perceive goal-directed actions by someone or something else.

About 45 subjects were asked to play a computerized reaction time game or, on some trials, to simply watch as the computer played it. Faster reactions earned money for the subject or for a charity, and subjects were told at the beginning of each trial where their earnings would go. They also completed assessment scales designed to measure their altruism in real-world situations.

Among subjects who scored high on the altruism scale, the pSTC became more active during "watching" sessions and less active during "playing" sessions. Moreover, this link between pSTC activation and watching was strongest when the charity, not the subject, was designated to receive the game's winnings. Among low-altruism subjects, pSTC activation was not significantly altered by the conditions of the game – that is, whether the subject played or watched, and who received the winnings.

The results suggest that altruism depends on – and may have evolved from – the brain's ability to perform the relatively low-level perceptual task of attributing actions to others, said senior author, Scott Huettel, Ph.D.

"Our findings are consistent with a theory that some aspects of altruism arose out of a system for perceiving the intentions and goals of others," said Dr. Huettel, a neuroscientist and NINDS grantee at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina. "To be altruistic, you need to see that the people you’re helping have goals, and that your actions will have consequences for them," he said.

Although his study and Dr. Grafman's study link altruism to different brain regions, Dr. Huettel sees the results as complementary rather than contradictory. "There are certain to be multiple mechanisms that contribute to altruism, both in individuals and over evolutionary time," he said.

Dr. Grafman's team included Jorge Moll, Ph.D., and Frank Krueger, Ph.D., who are both postdoctoral fellows in his lab at NINDS. Dr. Huettel’s team included Dharol Tankersley, a graduate student in his lab at Duke, and C. Jill Stowe, Ph.D., a professor at Duke's Fuqua School of Business.

*Moll J et al. "Human Fronto-Mesolimbic Networks Guide Decisions About Charitable Donation." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, October 17, 2006, Vol. 103(42), pp. 15623-15628.

EMPHATY
Empathy is an emotional reaction to the plight of others. Empathy can lead to altruistic behaviour, i.e. helping someone with the sole intention of enhancing that person’s wellbeing.
If we see people in difficulty, for example, we feel the same emotions, and this may prompt us to help them. Yet the relationship between empathy and altruism is still far from clear. Psychologist Lidewij Niezink has researched this subject. She concluded that when we help friends in need, we are prompted by feelings of empathy, and that when we help relatives we do so because we have expectations of reciprocity.

Niezink PhD at the University of Groningen. She measured the empathic responses by telling the participants in the study about a young woman who is in a wheelchair following a serious accident. The participants then had to answer a series of questions designed to show how much they sympathise and identify with the woman.

Social comparison

Among other things, Niezink studied the empathetic reactions of people who often compare themselves with others. ‘We all compare ourselves with the people around us, but some people do this more than others. When the people in this group compare themselves with someone in a worse position, they often experience negative emotions such as tension, agitation, anxiety and irritation.’ Niezink discovered that these negative emotions are actually an expression of empathy. These people feel involved with the person in need, and identify with him/her. The negative emotions are a way of expressing this.

Family and friends

Niezink also studied the role of empathetic feelings in relationships with friends and family members. She discovered that we help friends for different reasons than family members. ‘People help friends out of feelings of empathy, but they help family members because they have expectations about reciprocation.’ This result is surprising, because it was always assumed that empathy was primarily a characteristic of family relationships. ‘But it is logical when you think about it. When you move house, it’s always your brother who comes to help. You can usually rely on family. We do not choose our families, but we do choose our friends. We feel a greater sense of connection with friends, so feelings of empathy are more important.

Altruistic options model

Niezink also compared various studies of empathy, and concludes that the methods varied quite considerably. ‘They are not talking about the same concept. That makes it more difficult to study altruism.’ Niezink then developed the ‘altruistic choice model’. The model works as follows. You see the suffering of others and this leads to a feeling of empathy, over which you have no control. This can be followed by various emotional responses: sympathizing/identifying with the person in question, concern or ‘softheartedness’ (tender feelings). These are responses that we can influence. These responses, in turn, can lead to compassion and altruism, i.e. understanding the other person’s suffering and the willingness to alleviate it. According to Niezink: ‘Altruism is a choice and something that we can actively cultivate when we observe others in need.’

Negative perception unjustified

Niezink is surprised about the fact that altruism is undervalued in our society. ‘We are pack animals. We cannot exist in isolation, so it is no scandal if we are willing to help each other. I’m not saying we must, but we can. Altruism makes the world a more pleasant place.’ It is rewarding to help someone. ‘Some people say, therefore, that helping others is based on selfish motives. If you help someone and it has positive consequences for you, that does not mean to say that your underlying motives are not altruistic.'

The ability to empathize with others is partially determined by genes, according to new research on mice from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU).

In the study, a highly social strain of mice learned to associate a sound played in a specific cage with something negative simply by hearing a mouse in that cage respond with squeaks of distress. A genetically different mouse strain with fewer social tendencies did not learn any connection between the cues and the other mouse's distress, showing that the ability to identify and act on another's emotions may have a genetic basis.

Like humans, mice can automatically sense and respond to others' positive and negative emotions, such as excitement, fear or anger. Understanding empathy in mice may lead to important discoveries about the social interaction deficits seen in many human psychosocial disorders, including autism, schizophrenia, depression and addiction, the researchers say. For example, nonverbal social cues are frequently used to identify early signs of autism in very young children.

"The core of empathy is being able to have an emotional experience and share that experience with another," says UW-Madison graduate student Jules Panksepp, who led the work along with undergraduate QiLiang Chen. "We are basically trying to deconstruct empathy into smaller functional units that make it more accessible to biological research."

Selfishness May Be Altruism's Unexpected Ally

Just as religions dwell upon the eternal battle between good and evil, angels and devils, evolutionary theorists dwell upon the eternal battle between altruistic and selfish behaviors in the Darwinian struggle for existence. In a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), evolutionary theorists at Binghamton University suggest that selfishness might not be such a villain after all.

Omar Tonsi Eldakar and David Sloan Wilson propose a novel solution to this problem in their article, which is available in the online Early Edition of PNAS. They point out that selfish individuals have their own incentive to get rid of other selfish individuals within their own group.

Eldakar and Wilson consider a behavioral strategy called "Selfish Punisher," which exploits altruists and punishes other selfish individuals, including other selfish punishers. This strategy might seem hypocritical in moral terms but it is highly successful in Darwinian terms, according to their theoretical model published in PNAS and a computer simulation model published in the Journal of Theoretical Biology. Selfish punishers can invade the population when rare but then limit each other, preventing the altruists from being completely eliminated.

Individuals who behave altruistically are vulnerable to exploitation by more selfish individuals within their own group, but groups of altruists can robustly out-compete more selfish groups. Altruism can therefore evolve by natural selection as long as its collective advantage outweighs its more local disadvantage. All evolutionary theories of altruism reflect this basic conflict between levels of selection.

It might seem that the local advantage of selfishness can be eliminated by punishment, but punishment is itself a form of altruism. For instance, if you pay to put a criminal in jail, all law-abiding citizens benefit but you paid the cost. If someone else pays you to put the criminal in jail, this action costs those individuals something that other law-abiding citizens didn't have to pay. Economists call this the higher-order public goods problem. Rewards and punishments that enforce good behavior are themselves forms of good behavior that are vulnerable to subversion from within.

Eldakar and Wilson first began thinking about selfish punishment on the basis of a study on humans, which indeed showed that the individuals most likely to cheat were also most likely to punish other cheaters. Similar examples appear to exist in non-human species, including worker bees that prevent other workers from laying eggs while laying a few of their own.

Is selfish punishment really so hypocritical in moral terms? According to Eldakar and Wilson, it can be looked at another way - as a division of labor. Altruists ‘pay’ the selfish punishers by allowing themselves to be exploited, while the selfish punishers return the favor with their second-order altruism. “That way, no one needs to pay the double cost required of an altruist who also punishes others,” says Eldakar. “If so, then the best groups might be those that include a few devils along with the angels.”