The Neural Basis of Human Moral Cognition

Moral cognition — encompassing the judgments, emotions, and behaviors that govern how humans relate to one another in terms of right and wrong — is a distinctively human capacity whose neural underpinnings had remained poorly characterized at the time of this publication. Drawing on functional neuroimaging studies and clinical evidence from patients with brain lesions, this landmark review demonstrates that a consistent and distributed network of brain regions is engaged during moral cognition, integrating cultural knowledge, semantic social representations, and motivational states. The authors propose a cognitive neuroscience framework in which the interaction between these components — rather than any single moral faculty — accounts for the flexibility and cultural sensitivity of human moral behavior. This work established the foundations of the cognitive neuroscience of morality and opened new avenues for understanding social behavioral impairments in neurological and psychiatric conditions.