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Magnets can modify morality
Topic Started: Mar 30 2010, 10:27 AM (158 Views)
Loveandbeloved
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Magnets 'can modify our morality'

How complex is our sense of morality?
Scientists have shown they can change people's moral judgements by disrupting a specific area of the brain with magnetic pulses.

They identified a region of the brain just above and behind the right ear which appears to control morality.

And by using magnetic pulses to block cell activity they impaired volunteers' notion of right and wrong.

The small Massachusetts Institute of Technology study appears in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.


To be able to apply a magnetic field to a specific brain region and change people's moral judgments is really astonishing

Dr Liane Young
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Lead researcher Dr Liane Young said: "You think of morality as being a really high-level behaviour.

"To be able to apply a magnetic field to a specific brain region and change people's moral judgments is really astonishing."

The key area of the brain is a knot of nerve cells known as the right temporo-parietal junction (RTPJ).

The researchers subjected 20 volunteers to a number of tests designed to assess their notions of right and wrong.

In one scenario participants were asked how acceptable it was for a man to let his girlfriend walk across a bridge he knew to be unsafe.

After receiving a 500 millisecond magnetic pulse to the scalp, the volunteers delivered verdicts based on outcome rather than moral principle.

If the girlfriend made it across the bridge safely, her boyfriend was not seen as having done anything wrong.

In effect, they were unable to make moral judgments that require an understanding of other people's intentions.

Previous work has shown the RTPJ to be highly active when people think about the thoughts and beliefs of others.

Electric currents

The MIT team pinpointed the region in volunteers using a sophisticated functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) brain scan.

They then targeted the area using a technique called transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to create weak electric currents that temporarily stop brain cells working normally.

In one test, volunteers were exposed to TMS for 25 minutes before reading stories involving morally questionable characters, and being asked to judge their actions.

In a second experiment, volunteers were subjected to a much shorter 500 millisecond TMS burst while being asked to make a moral judgement.

In both cases, the researchers found that when the RTPJ was disrupted volunteers were more likely to judge actions solely on the basis of whether they caused harm - not whether they were morally wrong in themselves.

Morally dubious acts with a "happy" ending were often deemed acceptable.

Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, a brain expert at University College London, said the findings were insightful.

"The study suggests that this region - the RTPJ - is necessary for moral reasoning.

"What is interesting is that this is a region that is very late developing - into adolescence and beyond right into the 20s.

"The next step would be to look at how or whether moral development changes through childhood into adulthood."


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8593748.stm




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simple simon
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imagine this being done remotely on unsuspecting people?

ugh!

below are some more articles... note that they recognise a connection between mobile (cell) telephones are the part of the brain they are close to when being used... :( :o

Follow the links to see formatted text and photograph

Simon

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EM field, behind right ear, suspends morality
| The Sci-Tech Heretic

http://heretic.blastmagazine.com/2010/03/e...ends-morality/#



Morally impaired? Photo: Eddie Van 3000/Flickr CC


This new finding, from MIT, should cause scientists to more closely examine the risks to human health posed by mobile phones and other wireless, personal technologies. — M.B.


MIT neuroscientists believe they have isolated the brain region — just behind the right ear — where moral judgements take place.

And they can suspend someone’s ability to judge right from wrong, simply by generating a magnetic field near the same spot where many of us hold our cellular phones and wireless, Bluetooth, headsets.

The researchers’ findings, announced today:

“In both experiments, the researchers found that when the right TPJ (right temporo-parietal junction) was disrupted, subjects were more likely to judge failed attempts to harm as morally permissible.”

The technique used by the MIT scientists, transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), has been described as one that creates “virtual lesions” on the brain.

Neurostar makes a device that affects mood and behavior, from outside the head. Photo: Neuronetics

And although TMS’s long term effects on health are not well understood (similar amounts of electromagnetic radiation have been linked to increased cancer risk), the treatment is becoming increasingly popular for everything from tinnitus to depression.

The US military also hopes to use TMS to keep soldiers fighting, without the need to stop for sleep.

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Moral judgments can be altered
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/201...t-mjc032510.php
MIT neuroscientists influence people’s moral judgments by disrupting specific brain region
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — MIT neuroscientists have shown they can influence people's moral judgments by disrupting a specific brain region — a finding that helps reveal how the brain constructs morality.

To make moral judgments about other people, we often need to infer their intentions — an ability known as "theory of mind." For example, if a hunter shoots his friend while on a hunting trip, we need to know what the hunter was thinking: Was he secretly jealous, or did he mistake his friend for a duck?

Previous studies have shown that a brain region known as the right temporo-parietal junction (TPJ) is highly active when we think about other people's intentions, thoughts and beliefs. In the new study, the researchers disrupted activity in the right TPJ by inducing a current in the brain using a magnetic field applied to the scalp. They found that the subjects' ability to make moral judgments that require an understanding of other people's intentions — for example, a failed murder attempt — was impaired.

The researchers, led by Rebecca Saxe, MIT assistant professor of brain and cognitive sciences, report their findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the week of March 29.

The study offers "striking evidence" that the right TPJ, located at the brain's surface above and behind the right ear, is critical for making moral judgments, says Liane Young, lead author of the paper. It's also startling, since under normal circumstances people are very confident and consistent in these kinds of moral judgments, says Young, a postdoctoral associate in MIT's Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences.

"You think of morality as being a really high-level behavior," she says. "To be able to apply (a magnetic field) to a specific brain region and change people's moral judgments is really astonishing."

How they did it: The researchers used a non-invasive technique known as transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to selectively interfere with brain activity in the right TPJ. A magnetic field applied to a small area of the skull creates weak electric currents that impede nearby brain cells' ability to fire normally, but the effect is only temporary.

In one experiment, volunteers were exposed to TMS for 25 minutes before taking a test in which they read a series of scenarios and made moral judgments of characters' actions on a scale of 1 (absolutely forbidden) to 7 (absolutely permissible).

In a second experiment, TMS was applied in 500-milisecond bursts at the moment when the subject was asked to make a moral judgment. For example, subjects were asked to judge how permissible it is for someone to let his girlfriend walk across a bridge he knows to be unsafe, even if she ends up making it across safely. In such cases, a judgment based solely on the outcome would hold the perpetrator morally blameless, even though it appears he intended to do harm.

In both experiments, the researchers found that when the right TPJ was disrupted, subjects were more likely to judge failed attempts to harm as morally permissible. Therefore, the researchers believe that TMS interfered with subjects' ability to interpret others' intentions, forcing them to rely more on outcome information to make their judgments.

Next steps: Young is now doing a study on the role of the right TPJ in judgments of people who are morally lucky or unlucky. For example, a drunk driver who hits and kills a pedestrian is unlucky, compared to an equally drunk driver who makes it home safely, but the unlucky homicidal driver tends to be judged more morally blameworthy.


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Source: "Disruption of the right temporo-parietal junction with transcranial magnetic stimulation reduces the role of beliefs in moral judgments," Liane Young, Joan Albert Camprodon, Marc Hauser, Alvaro Pascual-Leone, Rebecca Saxe. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, week of March 29, 2010.

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dennis
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Combine the articles about "neurons" (Goro Adachi is writing about it and 2012 olympics/contact) behavior, morals etc.

with the magnetosphere, the cosmic "wave" from galactic alignment

Flood/water breaking analogies and histories,

and you may conclude

we are being told something.

The first flood of Noah was cleansing by water. The next cleansing is to be by fire.

But a fire of conscience is a fire within. Maybe it will be kindled by EM or EMP.

What will 90% of people do when they are awakened/realized/raised from dead to the fact that their lives have been lived like robots remotely controlled and manipulated to morally/spiritually degenerate ends?

They will lash out at themselves and the perceived controllers with a vengeance.

Pandemonium/tribulation.
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