Magnets can affect the brain

The magnet's magnetic field can disturb brain activity and make us deviate from a point of view.

Two defendants in a trial in Pierce County, Washington State, USA on March 30.Artwork: AP.

When people hear about a criminal act such as extortion, murder, robbery, most of us need more information before making a ruling about whether it is reasonable or unethical, unethical. love or willful. A murder with a gun can be an accident if the person who shot the trigger pulled the knife forward. But it was a deliberate murder if the victim did nothing to panic.

Many previous studies have shown that there is an area in the human cortex that is responsible for handling ethical evaluations. This region - located near the right ear - is called the right hemisphere temporal lobe.

Livescience said, Liane Young, a postdoctoral fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said that if the operation of the right hemisphere temporal lobe becomes disordered, people's moral views will change. . To demonstrate, Young and colleagues conducted a test for some volunteers.

The team applied a technique called "transcranial magnetic stimulation" to directly disrupt the activity of some volunteers' right hemisphere temporal lobe. The principle of this technique is as follows: Experts use magnets to create a magnetic field on a small area of ​​the brain that makes nerve cells unable to function normally. However, technology only causes temporary effects, so it does not pose a danger to volunteers.

In the first experiment, Young and colleagues applied transcranial magnetic stimulation techniques to 8 volunteers and asked them the story of a boy leading a girl over the bridge. In a script, the young man wanted to harm the girl but the young woman remained unharmed. But in another scenario, the boy had a good idea but accidentally let the girl stumble into an obstacle that broke her ankle. They must then evaluate the character's actions based on a moral scale. The lowest score is 1 (totally unacceptable) and the highest score is 7 (absolutely allowed).

The second experiment was similar to the first test, but this time the experts used transcranial magnetic stimulation techniques when 12 volunteers were thinking to make an assessment of the characters' actions. .

The results showed that in the first experiment volunteers focused on the intention of the young man, not caring about the consequences of the action. They all condemned the young man who wanted to harm the girl but failed. Because the effect of the magnetic field disappears just before the volunteers read the script, their judgment is like a normal person. However, in the second experiment, they only considered the consequences, not the young man's intention. So they condemned the boy who let the girl break his ankle, even though he had no bad intentions.

The team thought that the disturbance of the right hemisphere temporal lobe made the volunteers confused in analyzing the boy's intentions. So they make comments based on the consequences of the action.

"They think that if the perpetrator deliberately harms the victim, but the perpetrator's actions do not cause any harm or injury, the law should not be punished. On the contrary, if an individual wants to work well with another person, who accidentally inflicted damage on the other, was a crime , " Young said.

Young said that the finding is not only meaningful for neurologists but also important for judges or jury in court sessions.

"This study demonstrates that any individual can be affected to make judgments that are beneficial or harmful to defendants in court hearings. One thing is clear with the presence of magnets, A juror or a panel member will only care about the consequences of the action to judge the defendant but consider the defendant's intentions, " Young explained.