Altruism is associated with an increased neural response to agency

1. Altruism is associated with an increased neural response to agency Dharol Tankersley, C Jill Stowe, Scott A Huettel

2. Altruism • acts "that intentionally benefit another organism, incur no direct personal benefit, and sometimes bear a personal cost."

3. "Perhaps altruism did not grow out of a warm-glow feeling of doing good for others, but out of the simple recognition that that thing over there is a person that has intentions and goals. And therefore, I might want to treat them like I might want them to treat myself," explained study author Scott Huettel, an associate professor of psychology at Duke University Medical Center, in Durham, N.C.

4. pSTC – Posterior Superior Temporal Cortex

5. Experiments • Conducted two fMRI experiments where participants either played or watched a simple reaction time game to earn money for themselves and a selected charity • Afterwards, participants were given a self-assessment of altruistic tendency

6. Findings • Observed greater activation in right pSTC when participants watched the computer play the game • Only right pSTC and bilateral orbitofrontal cortex showed significant activation increases during Watching • Forward and backward stepwise regression analyses indicated only pSTC made an independent contribution to differences in altruism • pSTC activity predicts helping behavior but not empathy suggests low level encoding of actions