Hirnstimulation kann Menschen dazu bringen, sich weniger egoistisch zu verhalten – Wechselstromstimulation in den Frontal- und Parietallappen des Gehirns förderte altruistische Entscheidungen. Die Menschen waren eher bereit, anderen zu helfen, selbst wenn dies mit persönlichen Kosten verbunden war.

**Brain stimulation can nudge people to behave less selfishly**

**Alternating current stimulation in the frontal and parietal lobes of the brain promoted altruistic choices**

Stimulating two brain areas, nudging them to collectively fire in the same way, increased a person’s ability to behave altruistically, according to a study published February 10th in the open-access journal PLOS Biology by Jie Hu from East China Normal University in China and colleagues from University of Zurich in Switzerland.

The authors found that during the alternating current stimulation designed to enhance the synchrony of gamma oscillations in the frontal and parietal lobes, the participants were slightly more likely to make an altruistic choice and offer more money to someone else—even when they stood to make less money than their partner. Using a computational model, the researchers showed that the stimulation nudged the participants’ unselfish preferences, making them consider their partner more when they weighed each monetary offer. The authors note that they did not directly record brain activity during the trials, and so future studies should combine brain stimulation with electroencephalography to show the direct effect of the stimulation on neural activity. But the results suggest that altruistic choices could have a basis in the synchronized activity of the frontal and parietal lobes of the brain.

Coauthor Christian Ruff states, “We identified a pattern of communication between brain regions that is tied to altruistic choices. This improves our basic understanding of how the brain supports social decisions, and it sets the stage for future research on cooperation—especially in situations where success depends on people working together.”

Coauthor Jie Hu notes, “What’s new here is evidence of cause and effect: when we altered communication in a specific brain network using targeted, non-invasive stimulation, people’s sharing decisions changed in a consistent way—shifting how they balanced their own interests against others’.”

Coauthor Marius Moisa concludes, “We were struck by how boosting coordination between two brain areas led to more altruistic choices. **When we increased synchrony between frontal and parietal regions, participants were more likely to help others, even when it came at a personal cost**.”

For those interested, here’s the link to the peer reviewed journal article:

https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3003602

One of those things that’s super cool but can also definitely be morally sketchy. I wonder where we’ll draw the line on purposefully changing the behavior of others by affecting their brain.

There’s the very subtle versions if this, every day we encounter stimuli meant to evoke a certain feeling or behavior (advertisements, art, what have you)

And then there’s the scary end of the spectrum with stuff like hypothetical post-discontentment societies and turning people into literal drones.

This lies somewhere in that gray middle. Sounds like it would be used for good, but is it at the cost of bodily autonomy? And could the same process be used for evil?

Fun stuff to talk about.