Department of Molecular Neuroimaging, Molecular Imaging Center, National Institute of Radiological Sciences, 4-9-1 Anagawa, Inage-ku, Chiba 263-8555, Japan.
Nat Commun. 2012 Mar 27;3:759. doi: 10.1038/ncomms1757.
In sentencing guilty defendants, jurors and judges weigh 'mitigating circumstances', which create sympathy for a defendant. Here we use functional magnetic resonance imaging to measure neural activity in ordinary citizens who are potential jurors, as they decide on mitigation of punishment for murder. We found that sympathy activated regions associated with mentalising and moral conflict (dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, precuneus and temporo-parietal junction). Sentencing also activated precuneus and anterior cingulate cortex, suggesting that mitigation is based on negative affective responses to murder, sympathy for mitigating circumstances and cognitive control to choose numerical punishments. Individual differences on the inclination to mitigate, the sentence reduction per unit of judged sympathy, correlated with activity in the right middle insula, an area known to represent interoception of visceral states. These results could help the legal system understand how potential jurors actually decide, and contribute to growing knowledge about whether emotion and cognition are integrated sensibly in difficult judgments.
在对有罪被告判刑时，陪审员和法官会权衡“减轻情节”，这些情节会为被告赢得同情。在这里，我们使用功能磁共振成像来测量潜在陪审员的普通公民在决定减轻谋杀罪的惩罚时的神经活动。我们发现，同情会激活与心理化和道德冲突相关的区域（背内侧前额叶皮层、楔前叶和颞顶联合区）。判刑还会激活楔前叶和前扣带皮层，这表明减轻处罚是基于对谋杀的负面情感反应、对减轻情节的同情以及选择数值惩罚的认知控制。在减轻处罚的倾向、每单位判断同情的减刑幅度上的个体差异，与右中脑岛的活动相关，该区域已知代表内脏状态的内感受。这些结果可以帮助法律系统了解潜在的陪审员实际上是如何做出决定的，并有助于增加关于在困难的判断中情感和认知是否合理地整合的知识。
