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Welcome to the nexus of ethics, psychology, morality, technology, health care, and philosophy
Showing posts with label Serotonin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Serotonin. Show all posts

Tuesday, November 12, 2019

Effect of Psilocybin on Empathy and Moral Decision-Making

Thomas Pokorny, Katrin H Preller, & others
International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology, 
Volume 20, Issue 9, September 2017, Pages 747–757
https://doi.org/10.1093/ijnp/pyx047

Abstract

Background
Impaired empathic abilities lead to severe negative social consequences and influence the development and treatment of several psychiatric disorders. Furthermore, empathy has been shown to play a crucial role in moral and prosocial behavior. Although the serotonin system has been implicated in modulating empathy and moral behavior, the relative contribution of the various serotonin receptor subtypes is still unknown.

Methods
We investigated the acute effect of psilocybin (0.215 mg/kg p.o.) in healthy human subjects on different facets of empathy and hypothetical moral decision-making using the multifaceted empathy test (n=32) and the moral dilemma task (n=24).

Results
Psilocybin significantly increased emotional, but not cognitive empathy compared with placebo, and the increase in implicit emotional empathy was significantly associated with psilocybin-induced changed meaning of percepts. In contrast, moral decision-making remained unaffected by psilocybin.

Conclusions
These findings provide first evidence that psilocybin has distinct effects on social cognition by enhancing emotional empathy but not moral behavior. Furthermore, together with previous findings, psilocybin appears to promote emotional empathy presumably via activation of serotonin 2A/1A receptors, suggesting that targeting serotonin 2A/1A receptors has implications for potential treatment of dysfunctional social cognition.

Saturday, October 12, 2013

How serotonin shapes moral judgment and behavior

By Jenifer Z. Siegel and Molly J. Crockett
Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences
Originally published September 24, 2013

DOI: 10.1111/nyas.12229

Abstract

Neuroscientists are now discovering how hormones and brain chemicals shape social behavior, opening potential avenues for pharmacological manipulation of ethical values. Here, we review recent studies showing how altering brain chemistry can alter moral judgment and behavior, focusing in particular on the neuromodulator serotonin and its role in shaping values related to harm and fairness. We synthesize previous findings and consider the potential mechanisms through which serotonin could increase the aversion to harming others. We present a process model whereby serotonin influences social behavior by shifting social preferences in the positive direction, enhancing the value people place on others’ outcomes. This model may explain previous findings relating serotonin function to prosocial behavior, and makes new predictions regarding how serotonin may influence the neural computation of value in social contexts.

The entire paper is here.