Our brain may be hard-wired for altruism: study

Our brains are more hard-wired for altruism than previously believed, according to scientists who suggest that it may be possible to make people behave in less selfish and more prosocial way using non-invasive procedures.
In a study published in the journal Human Brain Mapping, 20 people were shown a video of a hand being poked with a pin and then asked to imitate photographs of faces displaying a range of emotions - happy, sad, angry and excited.
Meanwhile, the researchers scanned participants' brains with functional magnetic resonance imaging, paying close attention to activity in several areas of the brain.
One cluster they analysed - the amygdala, somatosensory cortex and anterior insula - is associated with experiencing pain and emotion and with imitating others.

Two other areas are in the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for regulating behaviour and controlling impulses.
In a separate activity, participants were given a certain amount of money to either keep for themselves or share with a stranger.

They were given USD 10 per round for 24 rounds. After each participant had completed the game, researchers compared their payouts with brain scans.
Participants with the most activity in the prefrontal cortex proved to be the stingiest, giving away an average of only USD 1 to USD 3 per round.
The one-third of the participants who had the strongest responses in the areas of the brain associated with perceiving pain and emotion and imitating others gave away about 75 per cent of their bounty.

Researchers referred to this tendency as "prosocial resonance" or mirroring impulse, and they believe the impulse to be a primary driving force behind altruism.
"The more we tend to vicariously experience the states of others, the more we appear to be inclined to treat them as we would ourselves," said Leonardo Christov-Moore, a postdoctoral fellow at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
In the second study, published in the journal Social Neuroscience, 58 study participants were subjected to 40 seconds of a noninvasive procedure which temporarily dampens activity in specific regions of the brain.
The researchers dampened either the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex or the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, which combine to block impulses of all varieties.

Christov-Moore said that if people really were inherently selfish, weakening those areas of the brain would free people to act more selfishly.
However, study participants with disrupted activity in the brain's impulse control centre were 50 per cent more generous than members of the control group.
"The study is important proof of principle that with a noninvasive procedure you can make people behave in a more prosocial way," Marco Iacoboni, a UCLA psychiatry professor.