Altruism, one of the most difficult human behaviors to define, can be detected in brain scans, United States researchers reported this week.
They found activity in a specific area of the brain could predict altruistic behavior — and people’s own reports of how selfish or giving they are.
”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 Scott Huettel on Sunday, a neuroscientist at Duke University in North Carolina who led the study.
They set up an experiment in which they put 45 college students into a functional magnetic resonance imaging scanner, which can take real-time images of brain activity.
They gave the students various games to play, and told them that winning earned cash for either themselves or for a charity. The students had chosen the charities beforehand from a list, the researchers report in the journal Nature Neuroscience.- Reuters