The neural processing of moral sensitivity to issues of justice and care.

The empirical and theoretical consideration of ethical decision making has focused on the process of moral judgment; however, a precondition to judgment is moral sensitivity, the ability to detect and evaluate moral issues [Rest, J. R. (1984). The major components of morality. In W. Kurtines & J. Gewirtz (Eds.), Morality, moral behaviour, and moral development (pp. 24–38). New York, NY: Wiley]. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and contextually standardized, real life moral issues, we demonstrate that sensitivity to moral issues is associated with activation of the polar medial prefrontal cortex, dorsal posterior cingulate cortex, and posterior superior temporal sulcus (STS). These activations suggest that moral sensitivity is related to access to knowledge unique to one\u27s self, supported by autobiographical memory retrieval and social perspective taking. We also assessed whether sensitivity to rule-based or “justice” moral issues versus social situational or “care” moral issues is associated with dissociable neural processing events. Sensitivity to justice issues was associated with greater activation of the left intraparietal sulcus, whereas sensitivity to care issues was associated with greater activation of the ventral posterior cingulate cortex, ventromedial and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, and thalamus. These results suggest a role for access to self histories and identities and social perspectives in sensitivity to moral issues, provide neural representations of the subcomponent process of moral sensitivity originally proposed by Rest, and support differing neural information processing for the interpretive recognition of justice and care moral issues

O universalismo ético: Kohlberg e Habermas

Examina-se a concepção de universalismo ético a que Lawrence Kohlberg chegou em suas pesquisas sobre o desenvolvimento do pensamento moral, sobretudo a idéia de que esse desenvolvimento, em todos os seres humanos, culmina em uma moralidade "pós-convencional" concebida em termos de princípios de justiça. Discutem-se algumas das tentativas que foram feitas de submeter essa concepção à verificação empírica e a apreciação crítica que dela fez Jürgen Habermas.The concept of ethical universalim at which Kohlberg arrived in his researches on the development of moral reasoning is examined chiefly regarding the idea that this development culminates , in all human beings, in a "post-conventional" morality conceived in terms of principles of justice. Some attempts to submit this conception to empirical verification as well as Haberma 's reactions to it are discussed

Mode of Effective Connectivity within a Putative Neural Network Differentiates Moral Cognitions Related to Care and Justice Ethics

BACKGROUND: Moral sensitivity refers to the interpretive awareness of moral conflict and can be justice or care oriented. Justice ethics is associated primarily with human rights and the application of moral rules, whereas care ethics is related to human needs and a situational approach involving social emotions. Among the core brain regions involved in moral issue processing are: medial prefrontal cortex, anterior (ACC) and posterior (PCC) cingulate cortex, posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS), insula and amygdala. This study sought to inform the long standing debate of whether care and justice moral ethics represent one or two different forms of cognition. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Model-free and model-based connectivity analysis were used to identify functional neural networks underlying care and justice ethics for a moral sensitivity task. In addition to modest differences in patterns of associated neural activity, distinct modes of functional and effective connectivity were observed for moral sensitivity for care and justice issues that were modulated by individual variation in moral ability. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: These results support a neurobiological differentiation between care and justice ethics and suggest that human moral behavior reflects the outcome of integrating opposing rule-based, self-other perspectives, and emotional responses

SATIS: Atom typing from chemical connectivity

SATIS (simple atom type information system) is a protocol for the definition and automatic assignment of atom types and the classification of atoms according to their covalent connectivity. Its distinctive feature is that no bond type information is involved. Rather, the classification of each atom is based on a connectivity code describing the atom and its covalent partners. It is particularly useful when handling coordinate-based molecular representations with no bond order information, such as the PDB format. We survey the occurrence of the various connectivity codes in the 20 common amino acid residues in a sample of 304 different moieties from PDB protein-ligand complexes and also in a pseudo-random sample of 309 organic molecules from the CSD. We illustrate how connectivity codes can be grouped together to define atom types. We expect SATIS to be applicable to the derivation of atom types for statistical potentials, to the analysis of atomic interactions in structural databases, to studies of molecular similarity, and to the screening of virtual libraries in drug design.</p

Israeli Moral Development Study, 1969-1978

This longitudinal study of Israeli kibbutz adolescents was designed to evaluate the validity of Kohlberg's moral development model in a cross-cultural context and to assess cultural differences in moral reasoning. Since this study includes both female and male adolescents, it also provides a data base from which to examine the validity of Kohlberg's moral development stages for women's lives. The study was conducted in Israel. The 92 respondents were divided into four subsamples, each of which corresponded with a kibbutz cohort. The sample includes both city and kibbutz-born youth. Data were collected in three waves. Participants were each interviewed once, twice, or three times between 1969 and 1978. Each participant responded to a series of moral dilemmas followed by a set of probing questions. The Kohlberg Moral Judgment Dilemmas used by the researchers included the Heinz Dilemma, the Officer Brown Dilemma, and the Joe Dilemma. The researchers also administered Kuhn's Cognitive Development Test ("The Plant Problem"). Each participant completed a basic data questionnaire which elicited information on the participant's family, religion, education, hobbies, and record of military service. All interviews were conducted individually and were tape recorded and transcribed. The Murray Research Archive holds transcripts of the Moral Judgement Interviews for all 92 respondents

A comparison of three theoretical approaches to the study of side-chain interactions in proteins

The continuing increase in the number of high-quality protein crystal structures means that a considerable amount of data is now available to those studying the interactions of side-chain atoms. These experimental data can be used as a benchmark for theoretical studies of the spatial distributions of side-chain-atom and side-chain-side-chain interactions. We use the program suite SIRIUS to calculate experimental side-chain-atom distributions, complementing the existing side-chain-side-chain distributions, for each of four systems: phenylalanine-carboxylate, phenylalanine-aromatic, arginine-carboxylate, and arginine-aromatic. Three theoretical methods are tested: first the drug design program GRID, which is suited to calculating side-chain-atom distributions, secondly the distributed multipole analysis (DMA) electrostatic approach, and thirdly the empirical potential CHARMm. We look at the predictions of each method for the four systems, and compare theory with experiment.Our results show that the strongly hydrogen-bonded arginine-carboxylate interaction is relatively easy to model, but that proper description of aromatic systems requires an explicit representation of the pi-electrons, as modelled by the atomic quadrupoles in DMA. For arginine-aromatic, we have to consider the effect of competing interactions before we can successfully reconcile experiment with theory.</p