Collaborative Research: Genetics of Moral Cognition

该奖项是根据2009年美国复苏和再投资法案（公法111-5）资助的。“道德认知是从认知科学的角度研究道德判断，将大脑视为信息处理器。认知遗传学是研究特定的遗传变异如何影响大脑处理信息的方式。这个项目的目标是开始整合这两个年轻和迅速发展的领域。最近关于道德认知的研究表明，道德判断不是统一的“道德感”或“道德能力”的产物。相反，道德判断是通过自动情绪反应和更受控制的认知过程的组合产生的，这两种类型的过程有时会相互竞争。这种竞争是由哲学家设计的经典道德困境引起的：为了防止电车碾过并杀死五个人，将一个人推到电车前面，杀死那个人，在道德上是可以接受的吗？人们对这种情况不同意，但研究表明，说“不”的倾向优先受到依赖于与情感相关的大脑区域（如杏仁核）的自动反应的支持。相比之下，说“是”的倾向更倾向于受到更多控制的过程的支持，这些过程取决于大脑中称为背外侧前额叶皮层的部分。最近的认知遗传学研究已经确定了影响这些大脑区域神经活动的基因变体。例如，已知有一种基因变体通过调节神经递质血清素的水平来影响杏仁核中的情绪处理。 同样，有不同的遗传变异，已知通过调节神经递质多巴胺的水平来影响背外侧前额叶皮层的受控认知过程。这项新的研究建立在早期研究的基础上，通过检查不同基因型的人做出的道德判断，并通过对不同基因型的人做出道德判断时的大脑进行成像，来探索特定基因是否以及如何影响道德判断。 道德判断是一个受到广泛关注的问题，与法律、医学、公共卫生和政治等实践性领域有关。更重要的是，我们的道德判断能力被广泛认为是我们人性的一个基本特征。 因此，更好地理解道德判断及其生物学基础可以为重要的道德决策提供信息，并可以为我们自己提供重要的教训。

Abstract"This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009(Public Law 111-5)." Moral cognition is the study of moral judgment from the perspective of cognitive science, which views the brain as an information processor. Cognitive genetics is the study of how specific genetic variations affect how the brain processes information. The goal of this project is to begin the integration of these two young and rapidly progressing fields.Recent research on moral cognition indicates that moral judgment is not the product of a unified "moral sense" or "moral faculty."Rather, moral judgments are produced through a combination of automatic emotional responses and more controlled cognitive processes, where these two types of processes sometimes compete with one another. This kind of competition is elicited by classic moral dilemmas devised by philosophers: Is it morally acceptable to push one person in front of a trolley, killing that person, in order to prevent the trolley from running over and killing five people? People disagree about this case, but research shows that the tendency to say "no" is preferentially supported by automatic responses that depend on emotion-related brain regions such as the amygdala. In contrast, the tendency to say "yes" is preferentially supported by more controlled processes that depend on a part of the brain called the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Recent research in cognitive genetics has identified variants of genes that influence neural activity in these brain regions. For example, there is a genetic variant that is known to affect emotional processing in the amygdala by regulating levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin. Likewise, there is different genetic variant that is known to affect controlled cognitive processing in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex by regulating levels of the neurotransmitter dopamine. This new research builds on earlier studies to explore whether and how specific genes influence moral judgment by examining moral judgments made by people with different genotypes and by imaging the brains of people with different genotypes while they make moral judgments. Moral judgment is a matter of widespread concern, with relevance to such practically oriented fields as law, medicine, public health, and politics. More philosophically, our capacity for moral judgment is widely considered an essential feature of our humanity. Thus, a better understanding of moral judgment and its biological basis may inform important moral decisions and may teach us important lessons about ourselves.