Biomedical subjects

Jorge Moll

Publications and source records attributed to Jorge Moll.

9 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2006

Event frequency modulates the processing of daily life activities in human medial prefrontal cortex.

Event sequence knowledge is necessary to learn, plan, and perform activities of daily life. Clinical observations suggest that the prefrontal cortex (PFC) is crucial for goal-directed behavior such as carrying out plans, controlling a course of actions, or organizing everyday life routines. Functional neuroimaging studies provide further evidence that the PFC is involved in processing event sequence knowledge, with the medial PFC (Brodmann area 10) primarily engaged in mediating predictable event sequences. However, the exact role of the medial PFC in processing event sequence knowledge depending on the frequency of corresponding daily life activities remains obscure. We used event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging while healthy volunteers judged whether event sequences from high- (HF), moderate- (MF), and low-frequency (LF) daily life activities were correctly ordered. The results demonstrated that different medial PFC subregions were activated depending on frequency. The anterior medial Area 10 was differentially activated for LF and the posterior medial Area 10 for HF activities. We conclude that subregions of the medial PFC are differentially engaged in processing event sequence knowledge depending on how often the activity was reportedly performed in daily life.

Activities of Daily Living↗

PubMed2006

Human fronto-mesolimbic networks guide decisions about charitable donation.

Humans often sacrifice material benefits to endorse or to oppose societal causes based on moral beliefs. Charitable donation behavior, which has been the target of recent experimental economics studies, is an outstanding contemporary manifestation of this ability. Yet the neural bases of this unique aspect of human altruism, which extends beyond interpersonal interactions, remain obscure. In this article, we use functional magnetic resonance imaging while participants anonymously donated to or opposed real charitable organizations related to major societal causes. We show that the mesolimbic reward system is engaged by donations in the same way as when monetary rewards are obtained. Furthermore, medial orbitofrontal-subgenual and lateral orbitofrontal areas, which also play key roles in more primitive mechanisms of social attachment and aversion, specifically mediate decisions to donate or to oppose societal causes. Remarkably, more anterior sectors of the prefrontal cortex are distinctively recruited when altruistic choices prevail over selfish material interests.

Adult↗

PubMed2006

Neuroplasticity in human callosal dysgenesis: a diffusion tensor imaging study.

Callosal dysgenesis (CD) is observed in many neurodevelopmental conditions, but its subjacent mechanisms are unknown, despite extensive research on animals. Here we employ magnetic resonance diffusion tensor imaging and tractography in human CD to reveal the aberrant circuitry of these brains. We searched particularly for evidence of plasticity. Four main findings are described--1) in the presence of a callosal remnant or a hypoplastic corpus callosum (CC), fibers therein largely connect the expected neocortical regions; 2) callosal remnants and hypoplastic CCs display a fiber topography similar to normal; 3) at least 2 long abnormal tracts are formed in patients with defective CC: the well-known Probst bundle (PB) and a so far unknown sigmoid, asymmetrical aberrant bundle connecting the frontal lobe with the contralateral occipitoparietal cortex; and 4) whereas the PB is topographically organized and has an ipsilateral U-connectivity, the sigmoid bundle is a long, heterotopic commissural tract. These observations suggest that when the developing human brain is confronted with factors that hamper CC fibers to cross the midline, some properties of the miswired fibers are maintained (such as side-by-side topography), whereas others are dramatically changed, leading to the formation of grossly abnormal white matter tracts.

Adult↗

PubMed2005

Opinion: the neural basis of human moral cognition.

Moral cognitive neuroscience is an emerging field of research that focuses on the neural basis of uniquely human forms of social cognition and behaviour. Recent functional imaging and clinical evidence indicates that a remarkably consistent network of brain regions is involved in moral cognition. These findings are fostering new interpretations of social behavioural impairments in patients with brain dysfunction, and require new approaches to enable us to understand the complex links between individuals and society. Here, we propose a cognitive neuroscience view of how cultural and context-dependent knowledge, semantic social knowledge and motivational states can be integrated to explain complex aspects of human moral cognition.

Brain↗

PubMed2005

The moral affiliations of disgust: a functional MRI study.

Recent investigations in cognitive neuroscience have shown that ordinary human behavior is guided by emotions that are uniquely human in their experiential and interpersonal aspects. These "moral emotions" contribute importantly to human social behavior and derive from the neurobehavioral reorganization of the basic plan of emotions that pervade mammalian life. Disgust is one prototypic emotion with multiple domains that include viscerosomatic reaction patterns and subjective experiences linked to (a) the sensory properties of a class of natural stimuli, (b) a set of aversive experiences and (c) a unique mode of experiencing morality. In the current investigation, we tested the hypotheses that (a) the experience of disgust devoid of moral connotations ("pure disgust") can be subjectively and behaviorally differentiated from the experience of disgust disguised in the moral emotion of "indignation" and that (b) pure disgust and indignation may have partially overlapping neural substrates. Thirteen normal adult volunteers were investigated with functional magnetic resonance imaging as they read a series of statements depicting scenarios of pure disgust, indignation, and neutral emotion. After the scanning procedure, they assigned one basic and one moral emotion to each stimulus from an array of six basic and seven moral emotions. Results indicated that (a) emotional stimuli may evoke pure disgust with or without indignation, (b) these different aspects of the experience of disgust could be elicited by a set of written statements, and (c) pure disgust and indignation recruited both overlapping and distinct brain regions, mainly in the frontal and temporal lobes. This work underscores the importance of the prefrontal and orbitofrontal cortices in moral judgment and in the automatic attribution of morality to social events. Human disgust encompasses a variety of emotional experiences that are ingrained in frontal, temporal, and limbic networks.

Adult↗

PubMed2003

Morals and the human brain: a working model.

Morality has been at the center of informal talks and metaphysical discussions since the beginning of history. Recently, converging lines of evidence from evolutionary biology, neuroscience and experimental psychology have shown that morality is grounded in the brain. This article reviews the main lines of investigation indicating that moral behavior is a product of evolutionary pressures that shaped the neurobehavioral processes related to the selective perception of social cues, the experience of moral emotions and the adaptation of behavioral responses to the social milieu. These processes draw upon specific cortical-subcortical loops that organize social cognition, emotion and motivation into uniquely human forms of experience and behavior. We put forth a model of brain-behavior relationships underlying moral reasoning and emotion that accommodates the impairments of moral behavior observed in neuropsychiatric disorders. This model provides a framework for empirical testing with current methods of neurobehavioral analysis.

Brain↗

PubMed2003

The cerebral correlates of set-shifting: an fMRI study of the trail making test.

The trail making test (TMT) pertains to a family of tests that tap the ability to alternate between cognitive categories. However, the value of the TMT as a localizing instrument remains elusive. Here we report the results of a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study of a verbal adaptation of the TMT (vTMT). The vTMT takes advantage of the set-shifting properties of the TMT and, at the same time, minimizes the visuospatial and visuomotor components of the written TMT. Whole brain BOLD fMRI was performed during the alternating execution of vTMTA and vTMTB in seven normal adults with more than 12 years of formal education. Brain activation related to the set-shifting component of vTMTB was investigated by comparing performance on vTMTB with vTMTA, a simple counting task. There was a marked asymmetry of activation in favor of the left hemisphere, most notably in dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (BA 6 lateral, 44 and 46) and supplementary motor area/cingulate sulcus (BA 6 medial and 32). The intraparietal sulcus (BA 7 and 39) was bilaterally activated. These findings are in line with clinico-anatomic and functional neuroimaging data that point to a critical role of the dorsolateral and medial prefrontal cortices as well as the intraparietal sulci in the regulation of cognitive flexibility, intention, and the covert execution of saccades/anti-saccades. Many commonly used neuropsychological paradigms, such as the Stroop, Wisconsin Card Sorting, and go - no go tasks, share some patterns of cerebral activation with the TMT.

Adult↗

PubMed2002

The neural correlates of moral sensitivity: a functional magnetic resonance imaging investigation of basic and moral emotions.

Humans are endowed with a natural sense of fairness that permeates social perceptions and interactions. This moral stance is so ubiquitous that we may not notice it as a fundamental component of daily decision making and in the workings of many legal, political, and social systems. Emotion plays a pivotal role in moral experience by assigning human values to events, objects, and actions. Although the brain correlates of basic emotions have been explored, the neural organization of "moral emotions" in the human brain remains poorly understood. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging and a passive visual task, we show that both basic and moral emotions activate the amygdala, thalamus, and upper midbrain. The orbital and medial prefrontal cortex and the superior temporal sulcus are also recruited by viewing scenes evocative of moral emotions. Our results indicate that the orbital and medial sectors of the prefrontal cortex and the superior temporal sulcus region, which are critical regions for social behavior and perception, play a central role in moral appraisals. We suggest that the automatic tagging of ordinary social events with moral values may be an important mechanism for implicit social behaviors in humans.

Adult↗

PubMed2002

Functional networks in emotional moral and nonmoral social judgments.

Reading daily newspaper articles often evokes opinions and social judgments about the characters and stories. Social and moral judgments rely on the proper functioning of neural circuits concerned with complex cognitive and emotional processes. To examine whether dissociable neural systems mediate emotionally charged moral and nonmoral social judgments, we used a visual sentence verification task in conjunction with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). We found that a network comprising the medial orbitofrontal cortex, the temporal pole and the superior temporal sulcus of the left hemisphere was specifically activated by moral judgments. In contrast, judgment of emotionally evocative, but non-moral statements activated the left amygdala, lingual gyri, and the lateral orbital gyrus. These findings provide new evidence that the orbitofrontal cortex has dedicated subregions specialized in processing specific forms of social behavior.

Adult↗