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Page: << Prev | 1 | 2 | 3 | Next >> Huettel said he was surprised by the study results.
"We went into this experiment with the idea that altruism was really a function of the brain's reward systems -- altruistic people would simply find it more rewarding," he said.
But instead, a whole other brain region, called the posterior superior temporal cortex (pSTC), kicked into high gear as altruism levels rose.
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The pSTC is located near the back of the brain and is not focused on reward. Instead, it focuses on perceiving others' intentions and actions, Huettel said.
"The general function of this region is that it seems to be associated with perceiving, usually visually, stimuli that seems meaningful to us -- for example, something in the environment that might move an object from place to place," he explained.
This type of perception would have allowed humans' more primitive ancestors to quickly pick out a potential threat -- a crouching lion, for example -- from amid a mass of less important stimuli.
It's much less clear why pSTC activity gets ramped up in the brains of altruistic people, however. "That was really surprising to us," Huettel said.
The researchers found that pSTC activity was highest when study participants were observing the computer play the game on its own -- not when they were playing themselves. "That gets to this idea of agency -- watching somebody else play the game," Huettel said. "You are thinking, 'Oh, the computer pressed the button -- somebody else did that.' "
The bottom line, he said, is that altruism may rely on a basic understanding that others have motivations and actions that may be similar to our own.
"It's not exactly empathy," he said, but something more primitive. "We think that altruism may have grown out of -- at least in part -- such a system."
Another expert said the Duke study raises even more questions than it answers.
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