Damage to the prefrontal cortex and the moral judgements

The psychological and neurobiological processes underlying moral judgement ahve been the focus of many recent empirical studies.Of central interest is whether emotions play a causal role in moral judgement, and, inparallel, how emotion related areas of the brain contribute to moral judgement. In the paper, six patients with focal bilateral damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPC), a brain region necessary for the normal generation of social emotions, produce an abnormally "utilitarian" judgement on moral dilemmas, for example: having to sacrifice one person`s life to save a number of other lives. In contrast, a normal VMPC in other patients have a good judgement in this dilemmas. Then the VMPC have an important role in our normal judgement of right and wrong and the emotion for generate those judgements.

By Antonio Damasio